Conflict Of Interest
by Jocelyn
Summary: AU. Duty in the Jaeger Program often comes at the expense of family, and few feel that conflict more than Stacker Pentecost and Hercules Hansen. Ch. 5: Tendo remembers the friends he lost as he looks at Raleigh, the one he got back, and Chuck finds it harder to disclaim Pentecost's influence than he would like as the memorials take place after Operation Pitfall. Complete.
1. Eating Crow and Chasing Rabbits

_**Author's Notes:** This fic is the sequel to my ficlet, _War Clock_, but it isn't required reading. The only important plot point of _War Clock_ is that two of the Wei triplets and both Kaidanovskys survived the battle of Hong Kong. Apart from that, the canon remains the same as Striker Eureka and Gipsy Danger depart for the Breach._

_There's some variation in the novelization and other sources about Raleigh Becket's departure after Yancy's death, and also about Mako and Chuck's ages and Academy classes. For this story, I'm going with the novel canon that Raleigh was dismissed for disobeying orders. Also assuming the following: Mako is about two years younger than Chuck, Chuck enrolled in the Academy in the first half of 2020 at age 16, and Mako enrolled in early 2023 when she turned 18._

_**WARNING:** There is a lot of profanity in this story - hey, it's the apocalypse! You'd swear too!_

**Conflict of Interest**

**Chapter One: Eating Crow and Chasing Rabbits**

Chuck had never successfully drifted with anyone apart from his father. He supposed he could take Marshall at his word that the man wasn't likely to go rabbit-chasing, or even let any of his own rabbits loose enough to distract his partner. There wasn't much in Chuck's own history that could trigger a modesty recoil, simply because he didn't care whether Herc knew what he got up to off-base.

Fellow Rangers had been appalled by the notion of drifting with a parent, but Chuck always shrugged it off. "If the old man wants to get bent out of shape because I get a little play, that's his problem. Quickest way to forget about what you see is to forget about what you see." But after years of drifting, Chuck knew that as long as he wasn't violating the PPDC code of conduct, Herc didn't care either.

There were a few awkward moments in the drift, images and sensations that made Herc wince or Chuck wrinkle his nose, but the problems would only arise if either of them tried to actively block something. Herc didn't and Chuck didn't. They were better partners in a Jaeger than out of one - the whole bloody world could figure that out.

He wondered if that would still be true, if by some miracle he came back from this. Hell, probably. All the barriers came tumbling down like that useless Sydney wall when he was standing outside the elevator, trying to pretend he wasn't scared shitless and feeling total cognitive dissonance because he was suited up and Herc wasn't.

"_I want to live," _he'd told Becket and Mori. It hadn't been a lie, and it still wasn't, and now he was going into this endgame with a partner he'd never had before and leaving his father behind.

Bad enough that this was so likely to be a suicide run. Worse that his old man was having to think about things like regrets for words unsaid. _"I know 'em all. I always have._"

They were the words that flashed through the drift in bursts so quick that Chuck sometimes wondered if Herc was even truly conscious of them. With ten kills, Striker'd had plenty of close calls, and in those tight spots, knocked off their feet or struggling to hold back a crushing blow or a lethal talon, it would flit through the headspace. It was more a sensation than actual articulated words:

"Left arm's losing hydraulic pressure!" - _Notmyson you bloody stinking invading alien shit, get your ugly fangs out of our face - _"Watch the claws, watch it, Chuck!" -_ notmyboynotmyboyyouwon'tgetmyboy - _"Empty the clip while you've got control!" - _Eh, you like that, bastard? Youmurderingfuckstookmywifeyouwon'ttakemyson._

They fought through those moments and survived; they always did. So Chuck had been certain that if they could do it - a father and son on the front lines together, whatever their quarrels off-duty - any other pilots who fucked up did so because they were too soft.

Flashbacks, nightmares, long stretches in the hospital, they all went with the territory; Chuck was fine with that. He wasn't quite full of it enough (or at least not out of touch enough) to think they should all come through without a scratch in body or mind. He'd donated blood for one of the Gage twins after one run, and then wrestled/restrained the other through a driftmare when the staff at the shitty little hospital had kicked him out of his brother's room. And then Chuck had bullied the night nurses into letting Bruce back into Trevin's room so they'd both be calmer during recovery.

On his next drift with Herc, Chuck had seen his father's pride. When Romeo Blue had gone down for good in Seattle, Chuck was furious with Bruce and Trevin for blowing it. It was easier to be angry than sad. It was easier to be angry than scared. It was easier to blame than mourn. If Jaegers fell due to mediocre pilots, well, then, Chuck and Herc's Jaeger wouldn't fall. Because they weren't mediocre. Such was the logic of Chuck Hansen, and sometimes even he knew it was bullshit. He held onto it anyway.

When they closed with Mutavore, in the wash of frantic, rushed thoughts in the headspace, Chuck had heard Herc musing on that. _Howthefuckareyoustillsonaive? _"Ow, shit! Top of the skull's too strong, aim for the neck! Chest rockets charging, couple more seconds!" _Tooyoungforthistooyoungtodietooyoungtounderstandtooyoungtooyoung - _

Few things could piss Chuck Hansen off more than people talking about his age, hinting that he wasn't up for this because of it. And a lot of things could piss Chuck Hansen off.

So he and Herc had been even more on the outs than usual on the trip to Hong Kong, and Raleigh Becket's arrival had only made it worse. Now they had _regrets. _Heading out of the lift for Striker's bay, silent next to Marshall, Chuck was trying to work up his usual anger, to carry it with him into the fight and let it blot out the more distracting emotions.

But this time, he couldn't. Not good.

To make matters worse, Becket and Mori were waiting at the junction of the corridors leading to the bays, where the crews would split for their respective Jaegers. Marshall and Mori went to the side at once, and Becket jerked his head at Chuck, as if Chuck needed any encouragement to stay well out of earshot of that conversation.

"Your dad okay?" he muttered.

"Fine." He was brusque and stiff and lying through his teeth, and they both knew it. Becket had the decency not to inquire after Chuck himself, thank god. The silence as they contemplated the wall and politely avoided looking at Marshall and Mori was... surprisingly not that uncomfortable.

But as Mori came back towards Becket and Chuck was passing between them with a nod on his way to rejoin Marshall, he felt... a twinge. Damn regrets. Unlike Herc, Becket and Mori had never been in his head and couldn't know the things he didn't say even if he knew he should.

Avoiding Marshall's eyes, before he could talk himself out of it, he turned back. "Mori-san." She looked at him in surprise. He'd never had much interest in the courtesies of the Japanese, and never used them more than strictly necessary for Jaeger Bushido. His bow to her was little more than a slight incline as he said, "_Shitsurei shimashita_."

Becket's grin was galling; the way Mori's eyes softened was worse. She mimicked his little upper body tilt and replied, "_Lindesu yo_, Hansen-san. _Itte irasshai_."

He nodded and turned back for Striker, hearing their footsteps echoing away as they headed for Gipsy. He didn't dare look at Marshall.

* * *

Stacker had been exaggerating when he said he carried nothing into the drift. Nobody carried nothing. But amid his command duties for the Corps after his final stint as a Ranger, he'd also spent a great deal of his time at the Academy helping with pons training. He was eminently suited for that, able to clamp down on his own stray thoughts and memories to the point that he could observe and advise a candidate on how to better manage their own drift.

Only a few years ago, his intention had been to take on that role with Mako. Back when they'd had more time, contrary to what Raleigh Becket imagined, he had not intended to hold his young charge back, whatever his personal feelings might be. Her trauma was a problem, but given enough time and training in the pons, he'd expected she could learn to overcome the memories.

But time had run out. He'd regretted that, only to find even after nine years, Mako Mori could still surprise him. Forced by the direst necessity into a conn pod with a co-pilot who carried his own load of PTSD, she had persevered. Now she would protect Stacker... and he no longer doubted she would succeed.

Despite what Stacker's underlings thought, he wasn't without understanding for any member of the Corps and the hell most of them had gone through, least of all the Rangers. He went by the book, always, but that was because the book - the protocols, the rules, the orders, the very culture of compliance and rank and decision-making in the PPDC and every other military institution - existed for a reason. The purpose of all those rules, all that authority that so frustrated many of his colleagues, was to overcome the emotions that could cloud judgment. His job was to be the one with clear judgment, no matter what his own heart might say. The fact that he did his job, again and again, didn't mean that his heart didn't often say different.

Mako's ambition to become a Ranger had been cemented by Tokyo and only grown as she did. Stacker had had to clamp down on his personal desire to discourage her, and keep clear sight that the choice was hers, and she should be free to succeed or fail without help or hindrance from her adoptive father.

When she had been younger, he could be more free with her. On her breaks from school at his various postings, she met many Rangers and had the chance to see many Jaegers. Not Gipsy Danger, though like all the Jaegers, Mako kept meticulous track of Gipsy's deployments and kills on her bedroom wall. She certainly wasn't the only teenager who did.

Due to his schedule, her school curriculum, and Gipsy's frequent movements, however, she never had the chance to meet the Beckets, though she had hoped to do so during her spring break in 2020. Obviously, that never happened. Instead, she'd come to the Anchorage Shatterdome to a subdued atmosphere, an investigation still ongoing, her Sensei constantly busy, and the staff along with local civilians grieving.

Stacker had seen the puzzled, dismayed sidelong glances she'd shot him when she thought he wasn't looking. After he dismissed Raleigh Becket from the Corps, Mako certainly wasn't the only one who looked at him that way, thinking it a cold, cruel thing to do. Nearly every other Ranger had sent formal letters of protest, along with numerous crew personnel. Gipsy's support staff had been outraged. Quite a few of them had quit or requested transfers to another Shatterdome out of Stacker's direct line of authority.

Stacker had expected Tendo Choi to be yet another vicarious casualty after Munitions Tech Alison Begay was reprimanded for getting into a bar fight with her ex-boyfriend. "The son of a bitch could've said whatever he wanted about me, but he should've left Raleigh and Yancy's names out of it!" Tendo had spat. "He should've shown some damn respect!"

Stacker had heard various reports of what the jerk had said, something to the effect that not only was he not sorry Yancy Becket was dead, but that Gipsy Danger's crew had deserved it. As a result, Begay had ended their already-troubled relationship by breaking his nose. Most of the Shatterdome staff had wanted to look the other way. Stacker hadn't had that luxury.

"My decision stands, Mr. Choi. You've already received a warning over the _Saltchuck_ interview, and I'd prefer not to have to give you another." Stacker had stared the LOCCENT chief down. "But I will if that goes on much longer."

Tendo had been angrier than Stacker'd ever seen him, flat-out shaking with rage. "They were our best team," he'd breathed. "They were _good_ guys. They saved ten lives that their _superior _wrote off, on top of all the lives in Anchorage!"

"Do you hear me disagreeing?" At that, Tendo had blinked. "Every order I've given is for a reason, Support Chief, and contrary to popular belief, I am not blind to anyone's suffering. Ranger Becket - both of them - committed a dismissal offense and left their post. My decision regarding Raleigh Becket was strictly in accordance with PPDC policy. Miss Begay assaulted a civilian in what should be deemed domestic violence." Tendo had scoffed, and Stacker had narrowed his eyes, "And you should consider how your own actions contributed to the latter."

Tendo's lip had curled. "None of my personal actions have been with married women or anything defined by the _PPDC policy_ as 'conduct unbecoming an officer.'" The contempt in his voice made it clear what Choi thought of that policy. He knew the rules and liked to claim that he always kept his personal life separate from business, but his reputation was widely known. Yancy Becket himself had been heard scolding the Support Chief for "causing drama in the Domes."

Hercules Hansen always said that if you had a shot, you took it. Stacker had taken it. "Then maybe consider the fact that your colleagues are in enough pain already, and that you are casually adding more with your attitudes about what 'a man's gotta do.'" Tendo had stiffened, but Stacker had gone on. "All is _not _fair in love and war, Mr. Choi; seven years of kaiju attacks and several thousand more of human history ought to have taught you that. Consider your own casual disregard for the feelings of others before you try to advocate on your friends' behalf."

A deep flush had crept over the younger man's face, and at last, he'd dropped his eyes. "I'll... keep that in mind. Sir." Taking a deep breath, he'd straightened, and said, "But my strenuous objection to Raleigh Becket's dismissal stands."

Stacker had steepled his fingers. "Do you really think it would be of service to Raleigh Becket to try to shove him into a Jaeger again now, or even to suggest that to him?"

"Well... no..." Tendo glanced around as if looking for a teleprompter. "But like this, dismissed for insubordination? That's..."

"Do you suppose he'd be at all comforted by being declared mentally unfit?" Tendo had winced. _There's method to my madness, believe it or not_. "As we both know, you're his friend. You spent many hours with him in medical, and you were there when he left the Shatterdome. You were one of the few people he said goodbye to. Are you really going to tell me that he intended to stay, or that anyone could have persuaded him?"

The irrepressible Tendo Choi had been unable to come up with an answer. Stacker had let himself rub his gritty eyes. It was a long-standing half-joke that nobody in the PPDC had slept in seven years. He'd gone on, "I followed PPDC policy because like all military regulations, it exists to direct us through multiple unpalatable choices. Do we have to like it? No. Believe it or not, Mr. Choi, I _don't_ like it. I didn't like any part of this. I didn't like abandoning a boatload of civilians in the gulf, but the risk was too great. Because Gipsy Danger's pilots thought different, they disobeyed a direct order. As a result of that insubordination, those civilians may be alive, but Yancy Becket is dead, his ship's in Oblivion Bay, and his little brother will never recover."

Tendo had bristled, but Stacker had plowed on. "We've lost a good Jaeger, a good crew, and a good life. As you observed, neither the public nor the Corps ever anticipated a situation like this, where one Ranger could live through losing his partner mid-drift. Even without that, Raleigh Becket witnessed the death of his brother and suffered severe injuries. He refused survivor's benefits over many efforts to persuade him - including yours. There is no easy way for him to move on from this, and no easy way for us. We follow PPDC policy because that's what it's there for, and at a moment like this, it's all we have. It's our fixed point. It doesn't move no matter how angry we are or how profoundly we grieve." He'd leaned back and asked dryly, "Any questions, Support Chief?"

It was a (somewhat) humbled officer who had left Stacker's office. The Marshall had let himself hope that maybe Choi would be one who could manage to learn to think with his head over his heart in the long run, and understand the reasons it was necessary to do so.

But he'd found himself in the possibly-karmic and definitely-ironic position of struggling to do it when he returned to his quarters and Mako was waiting with the Academy application packet in hand. She had presented a carefully-rehearsed speech that she was ready to apply. It had been hard to hear her over the roaring in his ears even as he sat with schooled calm and listened to her arguments.

The Academy had no minimal age, though Stacker had suggested it in every board meeting. It always fell by the wayside, with the rest of the senior officers insisting that they couldn't afford to stick to traditional limits in the search for drift compatible pilots and trainable, adaptable people. "Only in the past century did we confine our military personnel to those eighteen and over, and that's a scruple we can't afford now," someone had said. "Teenagers are uniquely suited to learning and discipline, and those are qualities the Corps desperately needs."

"Obviously, you've never had a teenager," Herc Hansen had snorted. He'd been sympathetic to Stacker's arguments, aware that Stacker was raising a youngster with Ranger ambitions too, but hadn't been as averse to the idea. After Scott Hansen was drummed out of the Corps, Herc had found himself with little choice but to let his barely-sixteen-year-old enroll in the Academy, under pressure from the PPDC brass (and the aforementioned teenager).

Chuck's enrollment had been kept quiet at the insistence of Stacker and Herc and some of the more sensitive officers. Still, it had ended up leaked shortly before Knifehead attacked, and Mako took it as justification that surely she too was eligible and ready to start the process.

Stacker had forced himself to keep his breath steady, his voice level and gentle, and took the application packet and went through his responses to her points, one by one. First, on the most basic factual level, Charles Hansen was more than a year older than she was. Second and more important, his situation was unique, based on a number of factors increasing the urgency. Young Chuck's father was an active-duty Ranger in need of a partner, and immediate blood family members had high incidence of drift compatibility. If this weren't the case, the Academy would probably not have permitted a sixteen-year-old to enter.

No, there was not a formal rule setting the minimum age, but there was no reason for anyone to become a candidate when they hadn't even completed their basic education. No, it was not because Mako was a girl. Lots of female candidates were accepted to the Academy, and when Mako was older, if she still wanted to enroll, she could do so with his blessing. Yes, other people applied to the Academy under age eighteen with their guardians' approval, and yes, there were candidates who didn't have a high school degree, but 'other people' were not Mako and didn't have him as a guardian. He expected her to finish high school and reach legal age first.

She had been disappointed, but soberly accepted his arguments and his authority, though she'd made it clear that her ultimate plan was unchanged. In the small, dark corner of his mind that he spent so much time stepping on as Marshall, he had hoped that during that three-year reprieve, something would change her mind.

That reprieve had ended, and just before her eighteenth birthday, she'd been ready. She'd come to him as formal and calm as ever, but with that determined fire in her eyes that he'd seen since she was so young, knowing that she didn't intend to abandon her quest. She'd clutched the application packet that time, with something in her bearing warning that she would not let him take it from her again.

He hadn't. He had no logical or legal justification for stopping her, though he did present his cautions to her again. "Understand that once you've applied to the Academy, Mako, your relationship with me will have to change forever."

"Yes, Sensei."

He'd smiled sadly. "Among other things, you won't be able to address me as Sensei or anything other than Marshall. Not even in your mind. Nor will I be permitted to regard you as family. I will be your commanding officer, and you first a recruit, then a candidate, then a subordinate. I will not be able to give you any favors or any help beyond what any other candidate or officer is entitled to."

Mako had bristled at that. "I would never ask for such things!"

"No, I wasn't suggesting you would. I'm going over these points, not because I don't think you know them or have considered them, but because I want us both to hear them out loud once more now that you are of age to make this decision." Her eyes flashed again at the suggestion that her decision was not yet made, but he ignored it. "Do you remember when you asked to do this three years ago? What was happening in Anchorage at that time?"

Mako needed only a moment to see what he was getting at. "The Gipsy Danger investigation."

Stacker had nodded. "Many people were very upset that I dismissed Raleigh Becket from the Corps - including you." She didn't deny it. "At the same time, I allowed a sixteen-year-old boy become the youngest-ever Ranger. You considered that a sign that you were ready too, but all that any father in the Corps could think was that we might be condemning Chuck Hansen to death in front of his own father's eyes."

"Chuck Hansen is still alive," Mako had pointed out softly. "Striker Eureka is very successful."

"So was Gipsy Danger until Yancy Becket's death. Mako, I didn't _want_ to punish Raleigh Becket after he lost his brother. My position as his commanding officer and the rules of the Corps left me with no choice. I didn't _want_ to see a minor piloting a Jaeger, but the Academy Board made their decision, and I had no right to stop it. I don't _want_ to discipline good people who make decisions with their hearts when I understand those decisions in _my_ heart - but we have rules, policies and directives that as Marshall, I have to uphold. If you apply to the Academy, if you are accepted, you will be subject to those rules, and so will your interaction with me."

Her gaze had been steady and far too old for her age. "I understand, sir."

Like a candle flame, a little flicker of humor had returned. "I didn't say start now." She'd blushed, and he'd finished, "I cannot stop you from applying, and I will not stop you. You have my permission and my blessing, and as long as you show the same dedication you do to everything else, I will be proud of you, Mako. That will not change, no matter what."

Finally, she'd smiled, eyes glittering with delight and hope and unshed tears, and he'd stood along with her to let her bow to him. As expected, she had completed the application within twenty-four hours, and he had watched while she logged onto the mainframe to submit it. When she'd stood from her chair at the interface, stiff from tension, he'd held out his arms, and she had stepped cautiously into them and let him hold her. "Thank you, Sensei," she whispered.

A dark, bitter part of him that hated his role, his rank, and duty wanted to snarl that promises be damned, he should have stopped her. That part of him called the rest of him a coward.

* * *

Stacker stomped down on that part of himself without mercy as the neural handshake was initiated. He would indulge it at the moment of his death and not a nanosecond sooner. Only at the end of all things would he allow himself to consider that here he was, back in a Jaeger, taking his own child, his friend's child, and Yancy Becket's kid brother to their deaths with him. Committing all that remained of the Jaeger Program in this final push, and if it failed -

_Silence. Enough_. He swept emotion and powerful memory aside, and held out his mental hand for Ranger Charles Hansen.

They linked up easily enough; Chuck was no amateur at drifting. The nervousness that he didn't show in his face or his voice floated through the drift like wisps of seaweed, and he didn't try to hide it there. He knew better than to try to hide anything.

The anger, frustration, and guilt of a damaged young man lay open to Stacker - grief for a mother and guilt that he was alive and she was not, anger at the man whose choice had spared him and condemned her, confusion and disgust at his one other living relative who'd nearly killed his father and forced father and son into each other's heads, with no secrets left and still unable to sort themselves out. Grief and anger and guilt for all the friends and comrades who fought and died and fought and died, and he still lived and still couldn't save them…

"Hansen, you with me?"

"I'm good," Chuck said roughly and took a deep breath. A few moments of peace drifted through their headspace: romping in a field a couple of miles from the Sydney Shatterdome with a wrinkle-faced dog, playing fetch or just chase, and the wind had been up, blowing easterly so that it didn't stink of pollution or even kaiju blue and they'd run until they were exhausted and sprawled in the grass. The warm weight of Max's body at his side in his bunk - the warm weight of a human body, hands and whispers and lusty eyes and occasionally even a real conversation...

Stacker let himself smile, and a quick sideways glance revealed the color in his partner's face, but Chuck didn't recoil. "Wouldn't have pegged you for a voyeur, Marshall," he muttered, an echo effect to the words that occurred in his head a split-second before they came out of his mouth.

"Did you see me looking?"

Chuck laughed softly as they controlled their descent to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. A few images from Stacker's own head flitted around them like fish, but as he'd predicted, they drifted just fine with only a few jolts.

One such jolt was an unexpected, shared memory: Chuck at fourteen in the Sydney Shatterdome as his dad returned from touring with Marshall Pentecost. He'd been sitting with a group of other permanent and visiting staffers' children in the loosely-termed day care, bored and getting along with them badly, as usual. But now, seeing it from his own perspective and Stacker's, he recalled that among those others had been a thirteen-year-old Japanese girl, quiet and shy, but who'd avidly examined the various Jaeger paraphernalia lying around.

_Oh, fuck me, that was Mako! _

Stacker hadn't come so close to laughing out loud in years. It must have been a symptom of drifting with a twenty-one-year-old. Although he'd known Mako since she made the final cut at the Academy, Chuck had never realized that they'd actually met before then.

But then Stacker got a surprise of his own: Ranger Hansen had known early on that Mako Mori was Marshall Pentecost's ward, but even at the height of their quarrel, he'd never mentioned it. He'd restrained himself from that just as he'd restrained himself from referring to Yancy Becket, by name or by implication. Because some shots even Chuck Hansen wouldn't take.

_What're you lookin' at? _came a growl through the headspace.

Technically speaking, Stacker hadn't been looking at anything other than the instruments and his screen, but they both knew what Chuck meant. He let it float away, but felt a flash of smugness from his partner.

For all his boasts, Stacker Pentecost had come closer to chasing the rabbit than Chuck Hansen had.

_**Coming Soon**__: As the Jaegers battle on the edge of the Breach, at the end of all things, Stacker Pentecost faces a final, brutal choice between the duties he holds sacred and all he ever held dear, and in Hong Kong, Hercules Hansen watches and finds himself no less torn between fatherhood and their mission in __**Chapter Two: Head and Heart**__._

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Translations (Japanese):**

_Shitsurei shimashita:_ apology - "I was rude."

_Lindesuyo_: "It's okay now" (don't worry about it).

___Itte irasshai_: Goodbye ("go and come back").


	2. Head and Heart

_**A/N: **__Many thanks to everyone for all the reviews and commentary! Please keep it coming! This chapter necessarily draws a lot of dialogue directly from the movie script - but deviates from it, as you'll see. _

**Chapter Two: Head and Heart **

"The release is jammed! We can't deliver the payload, sir!" Chuck bellowed. "The hull is compromised… half the systems are offline…" There ought to be a punch line in there somewhere; Stacker could feel it in the drift.

"Can we override the - " Scunner tackled them across volcanic vents into the seabed. Stacker tasted blood in the back of his throat and wondered whether it was due to internal injuries or his cells finally giving in to the poison they carried from Coyote. He kept in sync with Chuck and hacked at the kaiju – only to have the bastard retreat and send out some kind of sonar pulse.

And the other red spot on their tactical monitor suddenly abandoned Gipsy and came straight for them. Stacker ran his mind over their choices.

First option: Wait for Gipsy, hope she could get them out of this long enough to get themselves and one of the kaiju into the Breach...

_Condemn Mako and Raleigh to death, no way will they survive that, _whispered the part of him that he kept crushed in the shadows.

But their partners were limping across the seabed after Slattern. "Hang on!" Raleigh was yelling. "We can still reach you!"

Other option: "No, Raleigh, listen to me! You know exactly what you have to do. Gipsy is nuclear; take her to the Breach!"

"I hear you, sir. Heading for the Breach." If he still believed in a merciful god, he'd have thanked him that Raleigh was the one in the right hemisphere and willing to follow his orders. Mako was finally close to cracking; he could tell just from the sound of her breathing.

The two kaiju signatures were closing in. Scunner had ripped half their systems apart. When Slattern hit…that fucking ginormous _thing _was going to make short work of what was left. _Ginormous?_ That definitely was his co-pilot talking.

_You're MY co-pilot, Marshall, _flitted a weakly-sarcastic reply through the headspace.

Gipsy changed direction. Chuck's eyes were dark in the red emergency lights, his face straight, the shadows and bruises making him look more like Herc than ever as the outcome of Stacker's choice sank in: _This is it. _Anxiety bubbled through the drift, a brief burst of terror swiftly forced away, then just exhaustion and resignation fizzing around them and a distant voice like an echo: _DadDadDad... _

Stacker deactivated the handshake and pulled off his helmet, intending to give himself a respite in his last moments from that young voice in his mind. He called to his girl. "Mako, listen. You can finish this! I'll always be here for you. You can always find me in the drift."

_You too, Dad_, whispered a muted voice in the back of his mind. _I'm sorry._

Damn it all to hell; of course, he would ghost drift at this moment. But whatever fear and despair was betrayed in the drift, Chuck didn't let it out in his voice. "What can we do, sir?"

Stacker bared his teeth at his co-pilot. "We can clear a path… for the lady."

But there was another problem: there was another voice in his head that didn't have an Aussie accent and didn't come from the handshake, and taking off his helmet didn't silence it. It was that dark, bitter person that he'd overridden for so long, the one who wanted to judge with his heart and not his head, who cursed him for the decisions he made even as he tried to save lives and save his world.

That voice exploded into the front of his consciousness as the neural handshake faded. _You murdering bastard. _

He'd done his duty.

_You're taking them all down with you._

He had no choice.

_Yes, you do. _

They had to finish this.

_You can finish your part alone. _

Adrenaline erupted in his chest. He fought it, tried to stifle it even as he watched the man - _boy _ - in the corner of his eye removing his own helmet, no longer concerned with the screaming alarms from every system in Striker and the kaiju moving in for the kill. Chuck was prepared, he'd made his choice -

Stacker opened his mouth and shut it again. Chuck would be offended beyond all measure if Stacker proposed what he was thinking. No way would he consider it. No way would Stacker have considered it if their positions were reversed - something cracked and hissed and more water sprayed in. They were almost out of time.

Time for what?

_To save a life, _hissed his heart. _To save one life, because you can. Just one, whether he likes it or not - _

The pod rocked as another stabilizer failed, and Stacker lurched to one side - his hand landed on the emergency medikit, stowed as always in easy reach. He reached in and palmed the little jet injector of sedative, and pulled himself back upright in the harness.

He had no right to do this - _you have no right to take any more lives _- no pilot would ever desert his co-pilot - _it's not desertion if it's against his will _- the public wouldn't know that - _they will if you admit it _- he was a Ranger - _he's a boy - _he was a soldier - _he's Herc's child _- he had a right to choose for himself, he'd never forgive Stacker for doing this –

_So let him hate you. What does it matter? Let the one time you cracked and acted with your heart and not with your head save one life._

Chuck said, "Well, my father always said, he said if you have a shot, you take it."

_Yes, he does. He's said it to me before. _

Stacker took the shot. He lashed sideways and used the jetspray in a way PPDC medical had never intended, and for which Command would surely order a firing squad: on a fully conscious and cognizant Ranger, right in the neck.

* * *

Tendo pulled himself to his feet, bracing for seeing the signal of the arming nuke, seeing another Jaeger go off the grid, two more sets of vitals go flat. Herc's eyes were squeezed shut as he leaned heavily on the console.

Instead, to their confusion, there was a shuffle that was entirely on Striker's internal speakers, and a startled shout. "HEY, what the hell - " The LOCCENT medi-monitors let out new bleeps of warning as Chuck's vitals suddenly went berserk, and the Aussie was yelling, "No! No, I'm not going, you can't, I'm _nuh_ - " He broke off in a ragged gasp.

Tendo grabbed the mike, Herc's eyes flew open, and the meditechs began shouting in panic what they could all see on the monitors: Chuck was losing consciousness!

"What the hell's going on in there?! Striker, do you read, what's happened?" Herc was all but screaming.

"Marshall, Chuck!" Raleigh bellowed.

Mako shouted, "What is it?!"

"It's all right, Gipsy, LOCCENT," Pentecost announced. "Marshall Hansen, I'm afraid I have to resign. I just assaulted my co-pilot."

... _What...the...FUCK?! _

Mako gasped aloud, and Raleigh let out a strangled noise of shock. Tendo's dazed mind processed what he was seeing, and Newt Geiszler sucked in his breath, pointing at the readings. The conn-pod's structural integrity was good, Chuck's vitals were still good, no concussive forces registered by his rig. But the emergency sedative spray from the right hemisphere medikit – _Pentecost's _medikit - had just discharged.

Striker's left-hand escape pod was manually activated, raising Chuck into it and sealing as Pentecost went on, "I can't promise he'll make it, but at least he'll have a chance. All I've got to do now is push a button. Anyone can push a button."

The pod launched, and Tendo looked sideways at Herc. Chuck's father was rigid, his jaw clenched, a sickly gray pallor to his face. The pod's tiny blip streaked away from the signatures of Jaegers and kaiju alike, and Tendo registered no change in either kaiju's direction. Whatever those bastards had learned about the Jaegers, Scunner and Slattern didn't realize the pod meant one of their quarry was escaping.

In his mind, he could almost see Pentecost, alone now in Striker, tracking the pod's progress on its angled path through the water as he disabled the nuke's safeties one by one. It occurred to Tendo that maybe, just maybe, the pressure wave forcing the water ahead of it would spare Chuck the worst of the radiation and heat.

And Stacker Pentecost announced, "Mako, Raleigh, finish this. Marshall Hansen, you're now in command. Good luck."

"_Sensei, aishitemasu_," they heard Mako say.

The payload detonated.

* * *

Herc didn't know which way to look. At the monitor screens for Gipsy as the blast buffeted the already-damaged Jaeger, or at the tiny blip, whose speed increased still more as the underwater pulse sent it hurtling forward. The mission wasn't finished - but the pod was starting to spin. Gipsy still had to get to the Breach - the pod sensors were failing - if the conn-pod structure was compromised, Mako and Raleigh would be dead in minutes - _that's my son _- the kaiju signatures vanished, but all the pod's sensors were down except the beacon - _my son..._

The speakers and the screens fuzzed and blinked, then the sonar detectors bounced around as the displaced water rushed back - the signals blipped on and off, but then... "Systems are critical," shouted Raleigh. "Fuel's leaking… right leg's crippled. Let's finish this!"

Gasps and curses of relief rang out, and Gipsy's signal reappeared and began moving towards the Breach again.

"What're they doing?" demanded Newt.

"Finishing the mission." Herc murmured. _What about my son…_

"LOCCENT, we have the kaiju carcass. You guys better be right, 'cause one way or another, we're getting this thing done!" Raleigh panted. All they could hear of Mako was her faint grunts of effort as they dragged Gipsy towards the Breach.

Herc's eyes darted involuntarily toward the blip again. The pod was intact, but the ascent speed was increasing, so one or more of the failsafes must have triggered. Better that the passenger get the bends than that he suffocated or drowned before surfacing...

_Chuck. _

He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Tendo half-turned and leaned past him. "Rescue Choppers, mobilize, Striker's evac pod is bearing north-northeast. Should break the surface in - in - "

"Forty-eight seconds," finished Dr. Gottlieb on the other side of Newt, and he rattled off a prediction of the coordinates.

Tendo repeated them without hesitating, and finished, "Pallas One and Two, intercept. Everybody else, hold positions for possible additional retrievals." He shot a quick, challenging look around the room, and it occurred to Herc that he should be the one making the call on what and when to mobilize for rescue. "Oops, sorry, Marshall."

Nobody in the room was fooled for a second into thinking Tendo Choi was sorry. Herc felt his breath catch in what was either a laugh or something else, but then something caught his eye on the monitors at seabed-level.

One of the kaiju signatures was back.

"Fuuuuck!" Geiszler exploded as Slattern imposed her massive self directly between Gipsy and the Breach.

That had been the biggest bloody nuke ever detonated in the kaiju war, _meters _away from two kaiju, and one of them had fucking survived.

Herc listened to Mako's ragged breathing and Raleigh's muffled curses, saw the monitors picking up the systems check they were running on the weapons - the last monitor alarm associated with Striker Eureka blared, and everyone jumped. It was an emergency beacon. The escape pod had reached the surface.

Someone slid into one of the vacated chairs in front of Striker's now-dark monitors, and a familiar Russian accent ordered, "Carrier _Tolstoy_, this is Sasha Kaidanovsky of the Cherno Alpha, what is your position?"

One of the Russian aircraft carriers off Guam responded, "Lieutenant Kaidanovsky, we are standing by twenty kilometers to the northwest of the Breach. Do you require assistance?"

"An escape pod from Striker Eureka has reached the surface eight kilometers due south of you. Requesting emergency chopper retrieval and medical assistance. There has been an underwater nuclear event on the seabed."

The carrier contact's voice abruptly changed, someone with a deeper voice and heavier accent. "Dispatching rescue choppers immediately."

"Roger, _Tolstoy_." Sasha glanced over her shoulder at Herc and rubbed her splinted arm - same arm as Herc's. "_Tolstoy_ is closer than we are. They will get to him soon."

All words stuck in Herc's throat, then everyone jumped as Gipsy's jets activated and propelled her straight into Slattern. Jaeger and kaiju hurtled over the undersea cliff, and even at the Breach between dimensions, gravity still worked on them...they fell, flailing at each other.

"Mako's oxygen is down, half capacity!" They could hear her still breathing raggedly; adrenaline would serve for a few more minutes, but not long as she hacked away at Slattern with the chain sword.

He found his voice and growled, "Can you re-route it?"

"I'm trying, sir!" Tendo's hands were flying over the failsafe codes, but that stinking monster was still ripping chunks of Gipsy's back away, and her systems were collapsing one after another.

"Sir, we have a fix on Striker's pod," someone said. Herc's breath caught, his head turned - he met Sasha's eyes. Striker's meditech looked at them with brimming eyes. "No sensor contact except the beacon."

"I will handle it, Marshall," Sasha said firmly, and leaned closer to the microphone, calling the aircraft carrier and the Shatterdome's choppers again.

_Finish the mission, finish the mission, finish the mission - Sasha, that's my son you've got there. My son. _

"Hold on, Mako, I'm gonna burn this bitch!" Raleigh opened up the emergency heat discharge straight into the kaiju's chest.

The sensors were picking up all sorts of electromagnetic discharges, whether due to the damaged Jaeger or some part of the kaiju or damage from the nuke, they couldn't guess. Gottlieb was drawing his fingertip down the breach diagram, lips vibrating as if counting how much further they had to go -

Kaiju and Jaeger vanished from the seabed sensors. "They're in!" gasped Tendo. "They're in!"

Herc found himself clutching one of the mikes with Geiszler and Gottlieb on either side of him, all of them buckling at the same time. "It worked!" said Newt.

Herc looked at Gipsy's monitors; a few were still working, still showing readings, so at least the Jaeger still existed _somewhere_. The speakers crackled, but suddenly Raleigh's oxygen line disconnected. Even as Herc sucked in his breath, Mako's suit re-connected.

"He's giving her his oxygen," someone breathed.

The co-pilot's escape pod activated, and amid the static, they heard Raleigh again, " – have to do is fall. Anyone can fall."

"Raleigh, your oxygen level's critical now, you don't have much time!" Tendo warned. "Start the core meltdown and get out of there, do you hear me? Get out of there now!"

"Lieutenant Kaidanovsky, this is _Tolstoy_. Spotters have visual on the escape pod. Rescue chopper ETA two minutes."

"One pod is ejected," Tendo croaked, even though everyone's eyes were on those last few functioning monitors. In a few heartbeats, a blip appeared above the Breach and kept rising. "No detonation, sir."

"LOCCENT, 'f you can see me, I'm initiating reactor override now - " Raleigh gasped.

All they got were more damned alarms. "What's going on?" Herc demanded.

"Trigger's offline, he has to do it by hand!"

"He's outta time! He has to self-destruct now!" Newt insisted.

Of course, the thrice-damned, bloody thing was too damaged for remote trigger. Herc and the others bent towards the monitors, trying to will the things to show them something, anything. In the corner of his eye, he spotted Sasha motionless in Striker's chair next to the meditech, finger to an earpiece. Cheung Wei was behind her. Aleksis and Jin wouldn't be able to get themselves into the crowded LOCCENT with wheelchairs, but in the back of Herc's whirling thoughts, he suddenly knew as if drift connected to all of them, that they were all watching. Cheung's lips were silently moving - without looking up, Sasha moved her hand and caught his.

Raleigh was at the limit of his strength. "Manual – override initiated! Core meltdown in T minus sixty!"

The clock popped up, and Tendo transferred it to the central screen. No reason not to; almost all the data feeds in Gipsy were fried. Fifty seconds. Then forty. Thirty. Twenty.

Gipsy's first pod beacon activated as Mako broke the surface. Still one more soul remained on this mission. Herc's memory flashed to two blond boys in Manila, arms around each other's shoulders as they awaited news of Horizon Brave. One gone now. One left.

The second escape pod rig suddenly activated. Gasps rang out. "He's alive," Gottlieb whispered.

Ten seconds.

The pod launched.

How long had it taken for Mako's pod to cross the Breach again? Hermann Gottlieb was starting to hyperventilate on the other side of Herc. Not a good sign.

_"__Five…four… three…two…one…Reactor meltdown."_

"Direct hit – the Breach is collapsed!"

LOCCENT erupted into chaos, but Herc roared over it, "To the choppers! To the choppers now!"

"Mobilize everything! Rescue and recovery, mobilize everything!" Tendo shouted.

Sasha was hissing in Russian into her speaker, her finger back on her earpiece, shooting frantic glances at Herc. "Well?" asked Geiszler.

"Striker's pod is intact. They're descending now," she said, eyes darting to the chart of Gipsy's pod. "He's several kilometers from Mako."

"Visuals on Gipsy's first pod," Tendo announced. "Tracking solid, vital signs are good."

_One back alive. That's one more than we'd hoped. _Everyone's heads were now doing a tennis back-and-forth between Gipsy's chart and Striker's. Herc glared at the sub-surface scans. "Where's the second pod?"

"Tracking it but I'm getting no vital signs."

Herc looked at Sasha. Her fingers were darting over the console one-handed, and a shaky video feed finally appeared of a chopper hovering above Striker's pod, a diver being lowered towards it. Cheung was chewing his lower lip as he watched over her shoulder, and someone was speaking in Russian over Sasha's com. Herc had picked up a little from years of working with the Cherno team – it was something about air pressure.

Kilometers away, Gipsy's second pod broke the surface, and Mako swam to it. "I can't find his pulse," she said. "I don't think he's breathing. Raleigh?"

"Where's his pulse?" Herc muttered.

"He doesn't have a pulse."

Sasha spat an obscenity and Herc didn't turn this time. He locked his joints and kept his eyes fixed on Gipsy's screen. _Don't tell me, I know. Don't need to tell me. No pulse in Striker's pod either. One back alive… just one… she's alive, but the boys are gone… Yancy's kid brother… my son…_

Tendo's words to Mako were fading to meaningless buzz in his ears; he heard sobbing. Mako was crying. The pod sensors were blank. Sasha was cursing and growling orders into her microphone. Striker's medi-tech had her face in her arms, shoulders shaking – Geiszler and Gottlieb were muttering to each other.

Then there was another voice in the speakers. Everyone froze. Static – no, coughing. " – couldn't breathe," rasped an American accent.

_Raleigh._ Then… laughter. Mako's laughter.

"Marshall?"

One of the feeds flashed, then belatedly started transmitting vitals. Raleigh Becket.

"Herc."

Somehow the knot in his guts was only getting tighter even as Gipsy's support team broke into gasps and ragged cheers –

"HERCULES!" bellowed an accented feminine voice.

Herc blinked and turned – Sasha's eyes were bright, her face split in a smile unlike he'd ever seen. The room went dead silent, which was a good thing, because she could only whisper:

"He is alive."

His legs buckled. He knew she didn't mean Raleigh. Tendo, Newt, and Hermann were falling on each other, embracing and clapping backs, LOCCENT descended into chaos, but below them on the bay floors, he caught a fleeting glimpse of anxious faces, and turned away, shoving through to the main intercom.

"This is Marshall Hercules Hansen. The breach is sealed. Stop the clock!"

But he didn't wait to look at it, didn't need to see it, just pushed through the throng with no ears for the roar that went up around the room and outside it, all he could hear was Max barking. He had no eyes for anything but the screen in front of Sasha and Cheung, two more divers coming down from the Russian chopper to Striker's pod with a backboard. One was already on the pod, speaking into a radio, but to Herc's frustration, the guy was blocking the view of the occupant.

_That's my son you got there. My son._

"Sir?" It was Tendo, having to step in front of him to get his attention. There were tears on his face, but he was grinning. "We have half a dozen medical choppers on their way to Mako and Raleigh. We can spare one to head north."

"_Tolstoy_ is expecting you," added Sasha. She gestured around LOCCENT with her uninjured hand. "There is nothing now that cannot wait, Marshall."

"I can dog-sit for you, Marshall," offered Geiszler.

His throat was almost too tight to speak. His chest convulsed, stomach clenching – laughter bubbled out of him. Cheung Wei grinned helplessly too as Herc looked from him to Sasha Kaidanovsky, to Tendo and Newt. "Sasha, you have command of the Shatterdome until I'm back."

Then he turned and walked quickly for the doors. Everyone got out of his way, and he could hear Gottlieb exclaiming, "No, you are not keeping a dog in the lab!"

Herc laughed harder and started to run.

_**To be continued...**_

_**Coming Soon: **__The apocalypse has been cancelled, but no one ever said recovering from a war was easy. Herc reunites with Chuck and prepares for fallout of a different sort, while Mako, Raleigh, and their fellow Rangers take the first painful steps into the post-Breach world in __**Chapter Three: A Hug and a Kick in the Ass.**_

**PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO REVIEW!**


	3. A Hug and a Kick in the Ass

_**A/N:** Many thanks to everyone for all the reviews and comments! Please keep 'em coming! As you have probably guessed by now, this is a "Chuck Lives" story. Not "Everybody Lives," alas, but our favorite bratty Hansen punk does. Also, please note that I have absolutely no medical knowledge beyond a few minutes' review of Wikipedia - it probably shows in this chapter._

**Chapter Three: A Hug and a Kick in the Arse**

"Mako, Raleigh, we have your position. The choppers are on their way," Tendo said just as they simultaneously heard the beat of helicopter blades. "Just – just – just hang on!"

_Tendo stuttering? _Raleigh laughed weakly around his throbbing ribs and leaned against Mako.

"Are you okay?" Tendo pressed. Mako was as tired of yelling into a comm as Raleigh was; they slumped forehead to forehead, each feeling the other's helpless grin. "Uh, guys?"

They were ghost drifting all to hell. He had no idea where he ended and she began, or maybe they were both just so beaten down that it didn't matter who first imagined crawling into a bed and sleeping for a few years –

The memory hit them at the same time, and they sat bolt upright and chorused, "Chuck!"

"Tendo, Tendo, did Chuck make it?"

"Did Chuck survive? Did they find him?"

"Yeah. Yeah, he did. He surfaced a few miles from you; a Russian rescue team picked him up. No word on his condition, but he's alive."

Raleigh let out his breath in a rush, and Mako's face crumpled. Yes, Chuck was alive, and that was a whole new elation – but MarshallSensei was gone, and that hurt. Raleigh wrapped his arms around her as a V of choppers flew over their heads. "He saved him," he murmured in her ear. "He saved Herc's son."

"He saved us all," she agreed. "We could not have done it without them."

"We'll update you as soon as we know something," Tendo promised. "Hey, are your pod medikits intact? You're right in the middle of the post-nuke hot spot; if you've got intact metharocin packets, take 'em. And the max dose of any of the exposure treatments."

Neither of them wanted to move, but the thought of what the radiation rising up from the seabed could do to them made them sluggishly shift across the pod. "We hear you," Raleigh said, fumbling under the pod's case for the medikit. It was cracked, but the seals around the drugs themselves were sound.

Rather than let Mako go back into the too-warm, irradiated water for her own pod, he shared the fresh water bottle with her and the packets of potassium iodide, thrombomodulin, and activated protein. Then they nestled together on the bed of the pod and watched the choppers maneuvering into position.

To their shared annoyance, LOCCENT wouldn't let them go to sleep. "Come on, you two, work with me here. Medical wants you both awake until you can be examined," Tendo scolded.

One or both of them mumbled something unintelligible and dismissive, and a posh British accent came over the comm. "I'm afraid I must warn you that Dr. Geiszler is giving you no more than ten seconds to sit up before he commences singing, Rangers. For the sake of all our ears, I _beg_ you, sit up!"

"And if that does not work, I will play my music," said a woman with a Russian accent.

"_Et tu_, Sasha?" Mako murmured, but neither of them opened their eyes.

_"I'm the very model of a modern major gen-er-al I know the kings of England and - "_

Gottlieb hadn't been exaggerating about Newt's level of talent. Raleigh and Mako groaned and put their hands over their ears, but Sasha too wasn't making idle threats, and Ukrainian hardhouse came blasting over the comm.

Still, neither of them could find the energy to move. "All right, that's it, big gun time. You've got ten seconds to sit up, or I will SING along with the Ukrainian hard house!" Newt yelled.

"Okay, okay!" They hauled themselves upright. Luckily the first chopper almost had its rescuers suited up and ready to paddle their little rafts over to hook up and draw the pod in.

"That's better, Rangers," said Sasha. "I know you're tired. The worst is over, _da_? No more risks, no more mourning."

That wasn't strictly true, they mused, and Sasha was too world-wise not to know it. Now they were finally free to mourn. _SenseiYancy... _The apocalypse was cancelled. _Millions of people are still dead... so many friends, so many family…_

As the rescue teams hooked up the lines to the pod raft and started pulling them towards the chopper, someone must have noticed they were both crying. Someone probably told LOCCENT, even assuming the video feeds weren't up for all in the Shatterdome to see. But nobody said anything.

* * *

Herc knew that technically, Sasha and Aleksis Kaidanovsky only held middling rank in the Russian military. By most rules and regs, she shouldn't have had the authority to order an aircraft carrier crew around, and the captain wouldn't have stood for it. But _Tolstoy_'s people had jumped the moment she called, and from the conversations Herc overheard on the radio, it seemed they knew about the mission.

Who knew. Maybe they were one of the Cherno crew's contacts who'd got their hands on a nuclear bomb in the first place.

The carrier gave clearance for the Chinese chopper to land, and Herc found the captain himself waiting on deck with a medic at his side. "Marshall Hansen!"

_Mysonmysonwherethehellismyson... _"Captain! Appreciate your assistance," he shouted over the rotor noise, shaking the man's hand.

"Kaidanovskys say the Breach is sealed? Then we're in your debt," the man replied. He beckoned, and they jogged inside out of the noise. "Ranger Hansen is stable."

_That'smyson_. "How is he?"

The medic stepped ahead to lead the way below deck. "Concussion and severe bruising, also decompression sickness. We have oxygen on him, and the Naval Hospital in Guam has hyperbaric chamber."

"Radiation?"

"Minimal. The prognosis is good." The captain waylaid him, and Herc noticed absently that he looked to be around Herc's age. Something in his eyes was all too familiar, the understanding of fatherhood. "It looks worse than it is, sir."

_Well, that's a fair warning. _Herc made himself breathe, and nodded.

When he entered the sickbay, he got introductions to the chief medic and her staff, but once he set eyes on Chuck, he couldn't even pretend to be paying attention to anyone else.

Seeing his boy in hospital was nothing new. They'd both been banged up plenty over five years in a Jaeger. The harness, suit, and helmet technology were state of the art in any country, always being redesigned and improved. Still, there were only so many layers of protection for a couple of guys in a giant robot brawling hand-to-hand with a monster that could brush a missile aside like a fly. There'd been broken ribs, concussions, internal bleeds, electric shocks, the works.

Chuck had never looked this bad, and Herc could tell the medical staff had done their best to patch him up. It didn't bear thinking about what he must have looked like when they reached him in the evac pod.

His bare upper body was so swollen, red, and angry that for a minute Herc thought they had to be mistaken and that Chuck had been blasted with radiation. Then he realized with the motion of that pod, spinning around and around and rolling end over end ahead of the underwater blast must have done to its occupant. There were contusions and hematomas everywhere, both eyes swollen shut, although Herc hoped like hell Chuck wasn't awake or aware. He clung to the soft hiss of the oxygen machine and the beep of the pulse monitor, the reassuring green of the bars measuring vital signs on the screen.

"Internal injuries?" he croaked.

"None severe," said the chief medic, and pulled up a chart on a tablet. "Bruised ribs, probably other bones, no breaks, no major bleeds. No brain swelling." Her brisk manner was a relief to Herc. But then she reached the report on blood tests, and her fingertip fell on the telltale presence of the tranquilizer. She shot Herc a puzzled look. "Vhy vas he sedated?"

A weak twinge of wry humor pierced the fog of shock. _Oh. This'll be awkward. _That wasfollowed quickly by sorrow for a friend and a rush of gratitude so intense that his throat tightened. If he explained, he'd tar Stacker Pentecost's memory. If he didn't, he'd tar Chuck's. _Chuck would've gone down with his partner. He'd never have done it willingly. Stacker knew that. _Stacker had told them, knowing it would go on the record. He wouldn't have wanted Chuck to be accused of cowardice.

So, with an internal sigh, Herc admitted, "Jaeger pilots don't leave their partner by choice, not even on a suicide mission." He nodded to the tablet. "His partner didn't give him a choice."

"Pentecost?!" Herc glanced at the astonished captain. The ship's name hadn't rung a bell in all this chaos, but Stacker'd been mobilizing everything and everyone he could, including calling in favors and asking for them. The Russian military had worked more willingly with the PPDC than the Americans sometimes, less concerned with things like jurisdiction. There seemed to be more familiarity here than a mutual regard for the Kaidanovskys. This skipper knew all too well the gravity of what Stacker had done.

He gave the man a wry smile. "Tell me about it." _If it'd been me in that conn pod, hell, yeah, you can bet I'd have done it. I'd have had to trank Chuck too, but I'd have done it with half the chance. He might've seen it coming from me. The rest of them might have, might not have even blamed me. None of us saw it coming from Stacker. _

Such a breach of trust, of the rules, and military sensibilities that Pentecost held to beyond anyone else... it was unfathomable. It was outrageous. Chuck was going to throw a complete bloody fit once he came around; he'd be more pissed at the world than ever.

_Bless you, Stacker. That's my son._

He got a dry, amazed laugh, and the captain looked from Herc to Chuck and shook his head. "Sasha says he resigned before the end. She did not say why." He smiled, and nodded towards the bed. "Go, Marshall. I have sons."

So Herc did. _You have the same problem as me, mate? Never know whether to give 'em a hug or a kick in the ass? _He'd rarely done either; he and Chuck were among the few pairs who didn't get cuddly after drifting. _Probably because we were the only pair that halfway hated each other_. Yet by some miracle, outside of the Kwoon, their confrontations never got physical beyond a shove or two.

Ironic, that. Now the urge to hug the kid was more powerful than it had been since he was eleven, and Herc was afraid to touch him. He didn't dare do more than brush a hand over the fringe of his hair. "You look like hell," he whispered. "Max's gonna go for my throat for letting you get so banged up."

"He is as comfortable as ve can make him," the doctor said quietly. "Unconscious is better for now."

Herc didn't dare turn around, but his voice gave him away anyway. "Thank you. I owe you."

"It is our honor," said the captain. "We will reach Guam Naval Base in a few hours. They know we are coming."

Herc knew he should get back in contact with the Shatterdome. Check on Raleigh and Mako, order new equipment installed on the seabed to monitor the site - never hurt to keep watch. Order the investigations, get to work on the reports to the UN and the brass, have someone write a bloody press release -

_Fuck it all. This is my son. We've canceled the apocalypse; Stacker Pentecost is dead. You can all damn well wait. _

He sat down in a chair conveniently located at Chuck's bedside.

Obviously someone had been a step ahead of him.

* * *

They hurt. As the adrenaline and noise and chaos slacked off, and quiet and stillness settled over them, their bodies decided to loudly let them know of all the abuse that had been heaped on them. Even with the meds, Raleigh had "mild to moderate" (oh joy) radiation poisoning from Gipsy's meltdown. Mako had stress fractures in her right hip and torn muscles and nerve damage in her sword arm. Both of them had decompression sickness and lingering hypoxia symptoms.

And they were ghost drifting so severely that they shared each other's symptoms, so when the radiation nausea hit Raleigh, Mako brought her guts up too. Once they landed back in Hong Kong, Raleigh walked with the same limp that she did.

It was very unfair that after saving the world, Raleigh and Mako were both too miserable to even sleep. The medics kicked everyone out of the infirmary who wasn't specifically authorized to be there. Luckily, Aleksis and Jin were both authorized to be there, and sat with their fellow Rangers through treatment.

Thus followed some of the longest conversations that Raleigh or Mako had ever had with Aleksis Kaidanovsky. For such a huge, intimidating man and formidable fighter, he was remarkably gentle, and the medics didn't mind his presence at all. He sat at Mako's side while Raleigh was in detox, wiping her face as she sweated from Raleigh's fever. He gave Raleigh a hand to squeeze while he tried not to writhe from the pain in Mako's damaged joints.

Despite the drift, his English wasn't as good as Sasha's, though he was more fluent than Mako or Raleigh were in Russian. "I swear my Japanese has gotten better since drifting with Mako," Raleigh said at one point. It was just something to distract him from the pain in his body and hers as she took her turn in the hyperbaric chamber.

"I know," Aleksis agreed. "My English, much worse before the drift. Aleksis, she has the knowledge for language."

Raleigh stiffened, fearing he'd been mixing their names up all this time, but felt the flash of amusement through the haze of Mako's misery. A dull echo in the headspace informed him that the Cherno Alpha crew used each other's names interchangeably. _Huh. Thought I'd imagined hearing her call him Sasha in the cafeteria before._

So he shrugged it off and compared their various travel experiences, and the languages they knew. He and Aleksis had been in Greece during the same six-week stretch of 2009, which was funny. Aleksis had been in the military, and Sasha a diplomat, of all things. She spoke eleven languages fluently and had a black belt in four different martial arts. They'd met at an MMA club in Moscow in their teens and been married nearly twenty years. No wonder they'd set the record for the longest stable drift, though the Wei Tangs had gone almost seventeen hours a few years back.

"It is not so…" Jin tilted his head as he pondered the word he wanted, "not so sexy." Raleigh had to grin. "It hurts, to drift very long."

He nodded. "Bruce and Trevin Gage's record was fifteen, and they were off-duty for six weeks after, recovering. Yancy and I could go about twelve before we started feeling it; we started having problems in San Diego after thirteen hours. We bagged Cabrón thirty minutes after starting to destabilize."

"Cabrón?"

"Oh, I meant Clawhook. Cabrón's what the locals called him when we chased him up the Mexican coast. Fourteen hours total drift. That was our distance record too: sixty-four miles."

Jin actually whistled appreciatively and gave him a thumbs-up. "No lift?" Aleksis demanded.

"Not with that sidewinder so close to the miracle mile. We deployed to defend Tijuana, but then he ran north and kept faking us out. God, that was a frustrating ride." He and Yance had gotten plenty of practice with their Spanish profanity. The kaiju, which resembled some kind of freakish mermonkey with incredible water speed, had zipped inshore and then out again up past the border and finally aimed for the mouth of San Diego Bay. The pursuit alone had taken almost seven hours before they even exchanged the first blow, and they'd finally gotten the go-ahead to drive Clawhook into Coronado to prevent his escape after another five hours of attack-and-evade.

Once they actually pinned him, dispatching him had been relatively easy, and they'd even spared the city proper from the worst damage. The outpouring of gratitude from Tijuana and San Diego had made it worth leaving their Jaeger in stretchers. They'd both dropped as soon as the handshake disconnected, and the recovery team had found them passed out on the conn-pod floor.

"We had no long chases in sea. Too deep here," Jin mused.

Aleksis nodded and opened his mouth, but a voice scolded, "Boys!" Sasha walked in, shaking her head at them. "Stop these war stories."

Aleksis made a pouty face at her that was hilarious, but amid her amusement, Raleigh sensed Mako wouldn't mind a change of subject either. "There's news of Chuck Hansen," Sasha informed them, coming to run her fingers through her husband's hair. "He's in Guam at the US Naval Hospital, but they expect him to recover."

They all let out their breath in a rush. Even though Raleigh knew Mako had gotten the gist of that, he sat up and reached for the chamber com to relay it to her. Sasha waved him back down on his bed and smiled in at Mako. "The doctor says one just more hour in there, _moi umninky_. You'll both be much more comfortable soon. Chuck Hansen is getting the same treatment in Guam."

"How bad?" asked Raleigh anxiously.

"Not as bad as we feared. Your radiation exposure was worse than his; he stayed ahead of the blast bubble. But the pod wasn't harnessed, and he's severely bruised. Concussion, cracked ribs, probably every major bone is bruised, and the medics say he's one solid hematoma."

The same question occurred to Mako and Raleigh at the same time: "Where's Herc?"

"With Chuck. We would not have him anywhere else." Her eyes were intense. "I've already threatened to braid the intestines of UN delegate who tried to demand his presence." Now it was Raleigh's turn to give a thumbs-up, and Mako tapped on the chamber window with her good hand to do the same. "Stop that, _Mankya_, you're supposed to be resting. You too," she added, pointing at Raleigh, and he obediently put his hand down. "I'm in command by Marshall Hansen's orders, supported by the mission controllers of all remaining crews. When you and Mako are released, if he hasn't returned, you'll be assisting me too."

"Yes, ma'am," Raleigh murmured. "What happens now?"

"We repair the damage our invaders have caused and make sure they do not come back," she answered immediately. "We report the truth of what happened here and let no one rewrite it."

His skin still felt seared, his bones still throbbed, he was still nauseated, Mako had shooting pains streaking up and down her right side, but they felt a shared burn of something like determination come back to life in their chests. The idea that the Rangers might still have a purpose on Earth suddenly did not seem so exhausting or unpleasant. Jin and Aleksis were nodding, their jaws set and eyes bright with the same resolve as Sasha.

"Amen to that," said Raleigh.

* * *

Chuck came back to awareness like floating up from a sea of Kaiju Blue, hot and oily and suffocating. His mind was sluggish, his senses dull and muted. The first coherent thought to form in his mind was that this was going to hurt. Actual pain was stifled along with other sensations in this floating-sinking limbo, but he recognized what input his nerves were giving him. His body was damaged, and pain was coming.

Through the cotton sensation in his ears, most sounds blurred into an incomprehensible buzz, but he was able to latch onto a familiar rhythmic beep. Heart rate. Hospital. Chuck had awakened to that sound plenty of times. So he wasn't actually drowning in Kaiju Blue. Staying calm wasn't hard with all the narcotics in his veins. He was distantly aware of some nagging urgency in the back of his mind, smothered by the drugs and whatever injuries he'd taken, but he simply couldn't focus enough to remember what it was.

But if he was in hospital, then he wasn't alone. Wasn't trapped, wasn't lost. That certainty was as clear and reassuring as the high beep of the monitor. When he was in hospital, he was never alone. There was always a presence nearby, looking out for him. Always the same one. The first one he always remembered when he woke up hurt, the sensation that floated around him in the drift and in his dreams. He never talked about it, never consciously thought about it, but at this moment and every one like it that came before, he knew it and recognized it.

So he surrendered to the gentle pull of the medications and sank back into darkness.

* * *

The world was sharper when he rose out of the muck later on. The drugs were less, or maybe the pain was more, deeper, harder in his bones. Colder. Chills moved up and down, uncomfortable; he shivered, and that hurt too. Around him, around the steady beep of the monitors was quiet, just the faint shuffle of a private hospital room.

"How much longer? He's cold."

That tended to be the first voice he recognized: the voice that came with that familiar presence. It didn't surprise him, and he was still too weak, too fogged to think about pulling away. He was groggily aware enough to know that as he grew more awake, he'd pull away from that presence behind stony walls.

Only here in the semi-conscious haze and drug-induced tranquility, with that beep in the background, would he let it comfort him. Only here would comfort be given.

Cold and wet trickled over him from head to toe, piercing the dark haze and letting more pain in on top of it. He shivered and tried to grunt a protest, but had no idea whether the sound even left his throat.

"Easy, son." Calloused fingertips brushed light over his forehead. Even that felt wrong, distorted by more than just his drug-addled senses. Every part of his body felt wrong, and fear was starting to prickle to the surface. "It's all right," came the voice again, murmuring in a tone he only ever heard here. "You're all right, Chuck. Try and relax. He's getting agitated."

"Let's give it a few more minutes, sir," said an unfamiliar, feminine voice. "Trust me; he'll thank us as all this swelling goes down. Ice really is still the first and best treatment for contusions, even this severe."

He couldn't see. His eyes didn't work. His _face_ didn't work; his flesh was hot and distorted. The next noise he made was more like a whimper. "Shh. I know, boyo, I know. You're gonna be okay. You're safe."

His breath caught in surprise as the cold wetness moved over his forehead, then his cheeks, but it actually helped, easing or maybe numbing the strange, misshapen heat he felt where his skin ought to be. His breathing evened out, and the voice soothed, "That's it. You're looking better already."

"Okay, let's dry him off and bundle him back up. Sorry, Ranger, I sure wish we could invent dry ice that didn't burn people."

_Ranger... _That word twigged that sense of urgency again, reminding him of something he needed to remember, something he needed to do. He twitched as cloth delicately patted over him, and all the hands withdrew, probably afraid they'd hurt him.

"He's due for another dose. We'll have to cut it back starting tomorrow, but at least he'll get a little more sleep," said the woman's voice.

_But... what happened? _he wanted to ask. But his nerves stopped buzzing, and the throbbing pain melted away, and he sank back down into dark as calloused fingertips ran through his hair.

* * *

When he came back up again - he _hurt._ Pain was nothing unusual - but he hurt _everywhere_! What the hell had happened?

"Ranger Hansen, can you hear me? Can you wake up?"

"Chuck? It's all right, son, open your eyes." Whenever the old man got quiet like this, it meant Chuck had done a number on himself. Vague memories came back of duller, more muted pain and voices in the darkness. He must have been in hospital for awhile already.

His head was heavy and sore... Jesus, his eyes were swollen. Cheekbones, chin, jaw, nose, everything felt twice its normal size. His eyes were full of gunk. He couldn't suppress a hiss as someone gently cleaned them with a damp cloth. But his eyelids were free, and he could finally pry them open and take stock of his surroundings.

Herc was nearest at his side, leaning on the bed. Chuck blinked at him; the old man looked _wrecked. _They must have had one hell of a skirmish... then Chuck's gaze fell on the sling on Herc's arm, and memory came roaring back.

Striker. Operation Pitfall. The Breach. That Category 5, the nuke.

Stacker Pentecost in the right hemisphere of Striker, _not _Herc.

And... and...

Alarms squealed on the vitals monitors - people came running in - Herc leaned over him, his voice lost in the rising chatter and the roaring in Chuck's ears. His heart was trying to hammer its way out of his bruised chest, and his lungs were getting crushed, and he was panting in shock, in horror, in _rage _-

_You bastard, you bloody backstabbing BASTARD, you fucking traitor, you had no right - _

"Chuck! Chuck, easy! Easy! Goddamnit, I told you this was going to happen!"

"Get me a Haldol push!"

_No, no! _No more drugs, his own fucking co-pilot had tranked him and forced him out of his own Jaeger! Chuck thrashed, trying to throw himself out of the bed and away from any more syringes or jetsprays, but Herc was across him from one side, some orderly on the other, and fuck, _FUCK_, that hurt, his chest, his ribs, every part of him was throbbing, and the pressure forced a scream out of his throat -

Something cold seeped into his arm, and he tried to claw at the IV line, but it was too late. The adrenaline drained away, and strength leached out of his muscles just like before. The room went foggy, and too his utter humiliation, his snarls gave way to a sob.

"I know, son," murmured a voice close to his ear. "I know."

He was all twisted, and it hurt. The pressure eased as all the other hands let go, but he managed to focus on one familiar sensation - that presence, that voice, that calloused hand on his face, in his hair.

"I've got you." Arms around him. The beep of the monitors slowed and quieted again, but he could hear another rhythm under his ear. "You're all right, I've got you. Maybe listen to me next time?" his father was growling.

_Dad... sorry... why'd he do that... knew it, knew I should never have let anyone in there but you - Dad, I'm sorry I fucked up I'm sorry I didn't know DadDadDad..._

* * *

He knew it hadn't been that long when he came around again, because memory and senses returned more swiftly, but there was still a thick fog of drugged lethargy over him. It wouldn't allow for rage, for fighting instinct, for the hostility that was his security. Without those hot, hard emotions to wrap around himself, all that was left was despair and deep, crushing shame.

He opened his eyes, took one look at his father's face, and immediately shut them again. "Chuck," said Herc. "It's all right."

No, it was _not _all right,_ nothing_ was all right!

He managed to shift his aching body so he was facing away from Herc's voice. Nobody scolded him or tried to right him, and he opened his eyes to find himself facing a hospital window. Some green, tropical campus. South Pacific, somewhere off the Breach, not Hong Kong.

The Shatterdome probably wouldn't let Chuck Hansen set foot in there again, even if they had known it wasn't his choice...

Over the still-surging shock and resentment of where he'd ended up and how he'd ended up here, he managed to remember the mission. _"We can clear a path for the lady…"_

"What happened?" he muttered. "Gipsy?"

A hand touched his head; he flinched and pulled away, so Herc sat back again. "We won, boyo." That made him turn back over in confusion. Old man's face was straight, composed as ever, but there was... _something _in his eyes that Chuck had never seen before, some tone of his voice that Chuck had never heard. "We won. The Breach is collapsed. Mission accomplished."

_Breach... collapsed? _"Becket?" he croaked. "Mori?"

"They made it. Gipsy's gone, but they both made it." Chuck let his breath out. It was the first not-horrible emotion he'd felt since coming to, actual, ordinary relief over a pair of jockeys he didn't even like. But he was glad they weren't dead. He was tired of hearing reports of dead Rangers.

If the Breach was really gone, if the kaiju were really gone, then there'd be no more. No more dead pilots. No more Rangers at all.

"Striker?"

He already knew the answer, and Herc knew he knew it. "Stacker detonated the payload fifteen seconds after he ejected you. Cleared the path for Gipsy."

His throat tightened, and he squeezed his eyes shut. His hands hurt, but he balled them into fists anyway. "He had _no right_..." _Oh, fuck, shit_, what did they know? What had they heard? Or worse, what if they _hadn't_ heard?! He opened his eyes, suddenly terrified. "I didn't run - I didn't - "

"Shh. I know, son. I know. Stacker told us, and we heard it." Herc smiled wryly. "He confessed to 'assaulting his co-pilot,' and LOCCENT got the readings. We know you didn't desert."

These fucking drugs were making it impossible to control himself, and his throat was tightening up, his breath starting to catch. "I wouldn't," he choked out, shutting his eyes, too humiliated to face his father. "I never would have."

"I know. Chuck, listen to me. We all know. Stacker made sure we knew, and nobody doubts it."

"He had _no right_," he hissed. "You don't _do_ that. Not to your co-pilot. It was my fucking choice!"

"Yeah, it was."

Herc's calm agreement only raised Chuck's ire, as much as it could rise under these drugs, taking control away from him just like Pentecost had. He bared his teeth. "Being all soft with the invalid, are we? Tell me he was wrong, old man. I'm a fucking Ranger, remember? Still wanted me to act like one, then I was meant to go down with my bloody co-pilot. If he hadn't blown himself up, he'd belong in prison. Tell me you think he was wrong."

Herc folded his arms and drawled out, "He was _wrong_." Chuck scowled, searching for signs of a lie, but his father glared at him. "We've been drifting five years, kid, you know what goes through my head, but have I ever let that get in the way of doing my job or letting you do yours? You think I'm about to forget that?"

He surged out of the chair at the bedside and started pacing. That was easier to tolerate than his gentleness. Chuck felt himself calming down even as Herc revved up. "There's nothing more sacred than trust in the drift. You can't trust your co-pilot, you're both dead and so is everyone you're sworn to protect. No one's got the right to take an able man out of the fight, not ever. Pentecost of all people held to that, held to the duty, held us all to the duty and god help the man who forgot it. It's going in the official investigations, nobody's keeping it back, nobody's going to call you a coward, but his record's tainted along with his entire legacy, and damn right it should be! The man _cracked_. He went soft, he went weak in battle, the one thing you can never do. If he'd lived, he'd be up against a bloody wall by now, and you will never see me deny that! I'm a Ranger, for Christ's sake!"

Glaring out the window for a few more seconds at the trees waving under blue sky so far removed from iron and grease and sparks and blood, Herc let out his breath, and his shoulders slumped. He rubbed his eyes even as Chuck's stomach tightened, and he finished quietly, "But don't ask me to say I'm not thanking him for it. Because I can't do that either."

If Chuck had had all his faculties, he wanted to imagine that he'd have taken a swing at Herc for insisting on adding that stupid sentimental shit. But he was still in pain, still tranked within an inch of his life, and all he got was heat behind his eyes and his breathing going ragged.

_I shouldn't be alive. It was my choice. He had no right; he fucking sedated me! I'd never have gone. Sure, I was scared, everyone's scared, but I knew my job. I'd have pressed the goddamn button, and he had no right to stop me. _

But did Herc have no right to be glad his kid was still alive?

_Do I? _wondered a small, pathetic voice deep inside him that he'd never have allowed to reach the front of his mind if he'd been completely with it. His eyes burned worse, and he squeezed them shut. "What the hell do I do now?" he whispered.

No more Breach. No more kaiju. No more Jaegers, no more Rangers. _"I want to live,_" he'd told Mori and Becket. Had Stacker motherfucking Pentecost picked that up from the drift? Was that why he'd what he did? Well, he could congratulate himself in hell, because Chuck would live, and now he didn't have the first clue what to do with himself.

He heard his father returning to the chair and flinched when a light hand came to rest on his shoulder. But this time, Herc didn't let go. He didn't embarrass Chuck, didn't pet him like before, but didn't squeeze too hard. There was no part of Chuck's body that wasn't still swollen and throbbing. But the pressure was just enough to be like an anchor, like the presence in the drift, the counterweight to Chuck's turmoil.

"If you _were_ dead, you could feel as sorry for yourself as you wanted. But you're not. What's done is done. You and me, Becket and Mori, the Weis, the Kaidanovskys, we've all had to outlive our Jaegers. Outlive our families."

Chuck's breath caught. He couldn't help it. That was the closest Herc had come in years to directly referring to Sydney and Scissure.

Herc went on, "I was a soldier before K-Day, and I'm still a soldier. I'm Marshall now." That made Chuck open his eyes. "Once you're released, we'll go back to Hong Kong. Metric shitload of reports to do," Herc added with a heavy sigh. "After that, if you want out of the service, I won't stop you. You've paid more than your share, too bloody young."

Chuck scowled and looked away. Was that what had motivated Pentecost, that a Ranger with five years and ten kills under his belt was still some innocent infant too young to die? But Herc released his shoulder and sat back again, and now he smirked. "Just remember, whatever you do with the rest of your life, you answer to Max. Don't you dare disgrace that dog."

Chuck blinked, and stared at his father. Herc stared him down - and Chuck's breath started hitching again, but even as he tried to jam his fist into his mouth, he couldn't stop. A few tears somehow escaped his eyes, but he still laughed.

His father grinned broader than Chuck had seen in years.

_**To be continued...**_

_**Coming soon: **__Fallout spreads (figuratively) from the final battle as the world learns what happened. Chuck struggles to come to terms with surviving, and the rest of our heroes struggle to stay ahead of public judgment and their own demons in **Chapter Four: Public Relations**._

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**

**Translations  
**

_Moi umninky - (Russian) my smart one_

_Mankya - just a made-up Russian diminutive of Mako - you will never convince me that the Kaidanovskys don't have a soft spot for her_

_Cabrón - (Spanish) asshole  
_


	4. Public Relations

A/N: Many thanks to everyone for the reviews! Please keep 'em coming!

**Chapter Four: Public Relations**

After a week, most of Mako's symptoms had eased off, but Raleigh was still dealing with radiation sickness. Their full-blown ghost drift lasted nearly three days, which had all the pons medics in a tizzy, because the actual drift hadn't been nearly as long as many. Sasha offered to run interference, but they decided it wasn't necessary. Mako was happy to help them in their work, and Raleigh was so miserable that he welcomed any distraction. So that was how they whiled away the worst part of his convalescence: being occupied as much as they could with mental exercises and tests, dealing with the medics and psychs and their instruments and questions.

They were often joined by Newt Geiszler and Hermann Gottlieb, who were going through the paces after drifting with a kaiju together. Those two could be exhausting when they got going, but at least it was another distraction.

Sasha reported that Chuck was steadily improving and due back from Guam with Herc on the same day that Raleigh started feeling like he might actually be human again. But also that same day, Newt and Hermann were strangely hesitant when they came into the infirmary.

Aleksis narrowed his eyes, and Mako sat up, all of them sensing something was wrong. "Chuck?" Raleigh asked.

"Chuck is fine," said Hermann, raising his hands quickly.

Newt elbowed him. "There, see, those are the terms they're thinking on. It's not that big a deal."

"What has happened?" Aleksis asked impatiently.

Newt rolled his eyes. "_I_ don't think it's that earth-shattering. _He _thinks it's fate worse than death! You guys are rock stars!" Mako and Raleigh blinked at each other.

"And yet again, Dr. Geiszler wins the prize for insensitivity," Hermann huffed. "Yes, you're all being celebrated as you deserve, but someone here in the Shatterdome has leaked the LOCCENT transcripts of Operation Pitfall_ in their entirety_, which would cause any normal person - normal people defined as individuals not Newton Geiszler - some discomfort."

"Leaked?" Was it Mako's head being sluggish, or Raleigh's? Maybe both.

"It's online," said Newt, with a bit more tact than before. "Start to finish. Tendo Choi is _pissed_; someone's head is going to roll before Sasha even gets her hands on them."

"Why?" Mako breathed, baffled. "I don't understand. Why release it now? Marshall Hansen would have approved it, and it would be part of the report. Probably it would go public anyway."

"Dunno," sighed Newt, sitting down in the nearest chair. "The press has been going nuts because information's not out fast enough. Nobody really believes the Breach is closed just on the PPDC's say-so. Human nature, to want the whys and wherefores, but the rumors have been insane. Sasha just told us to ignore it all. People had worked out there was a major operation with the last of the Jaegers, that three people were rescued, and there hasn't been an attack since then, but until today, those were all the hard facts they had."

"And so now they know our names and... all the details. Every word we said, every reading - did they get the instrument feeds too?" asked Raleigh, his voice dull and tired.

Hermann nodded. "I'm afraid so. Marshall Pentecost followed protocol to the letter on record keeping just as he did on everything else. Every duty station in LOCCENT recorded all readouts and conversations by persons logged in, as well as communications with the Jaegers in the field. They had only just completed assembling all of those records for Lieutenant Kaidanovsky and the senior staff to begin analysis when the entire file was leaked. There may be a little delay, since the journalists will have to decipher it, but we are all about to become household names. I am not looking forward to my fifteen minutes of fame."

Raleigh wrinkled his nose. "Well... those of us who've piloted can give you some tips on dealing with adoring fans." He sprawled back on his bed, eyes wandering over the ceiling, then to Mako. "I... y'know, I enjoyed that part when... I was younger. I'm with you, though, Doc, not looking forward to it so much this time around." He smiled weakly as Mako came to sit on his bedside.

"Fortunately, Lieutenant Kaidanovsky had already anticipated the need for increased security," said Hermann. "No one comes in or goes out without authorization. Rangers Wei have the cooperation of the local authorities in keeping press off the premises."

"We can't keep them from writing stories, though," Raleigh warned. "No matter how much security you've got. Nothing will stop them once they've got their scoop. They'll run with it."

* * *

**_Do We Dare To Believe?_**

_Associated Press, Naomi Sokolov_

_For eleven days, kaiju activity along the Pacific Coast has stopped, breaking a pattern of steady increase in events since Trespasser struck in 2013. When the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps released a short statement claiming the Breach had been sealed and the Kaiju War was over, many people looked at it with the same disbelief that we looked at reports of an invading sea monster twelve years ago._

_Now an anonymous source has released gigabytes of transcript data from the Local Command Center of Hong Kong Shatterdome, detailing a bold mission that committed all the remaining resources of the fading Jaeger Program - and, arguably, the future of the human race._

_Do we dare believe the story these transcripts tell? _

_Experts are still analyzing the transcripts, which contain voice recordings from Hong Kong LOCCENT as well as instrument data recorded on board the Jaegers and elsewhere. But so far, the AP's analysts have determined the following:_

_The two remaining Jaegers, Australia's Striker Eureka and United States's Gipsy Danger, were dropped by their escorts to the seabed. _

_Striker Eureka was piloted by PPDC Marshall Stacker Pentecost and Ranger Charles Hansen. Gipsy Danger was piloted by Ranger Raleigh Becket and Ranger Mako Mori. Mori is better known to much of the world as Tokyo's Daughter, a child captured in a Pulitzer Prize winning photograph after Onibaba devastated Tokyo in 2016, staring up at her savior, the Jaeger Coyote Tango, then piloted by then-Ranger Pentecost. A fact that has been kept very quiet for the nine years since then is that Pentecost formally adopted Mori._

_A 1.2 megaton nuclear device was transported by Striker Eureka. Sources have not confirmed how or when the warhead was acquired by the PPDC, or whether the PPDC has control of any other nuclear weapons. _

_The Breach was guarded by no less than three kaiju, including the first verified Category 5 in history. Striker Eureka sustained critical damage and was prevented from reaching the Breach, with two of the three kaiju closing in on it._

_A heart-breaking exchange followed between the four pilots. Pentecost ordered Becket and Mori not to come to Striker's aid, but to use Gipsy Danger's nuclear core to destroy the Breach. He then made a personal farewell to Mori. _

_[Click here for full transcript]._

_Hansen immediately supported Pentecost's proposal to "clear the path" for Gipsy Danger in a kamikaze detonation of the nuclear warhead. However, Pentecost knocked Hansen unconscious and ejected his co-pilot's escape pod, much to the shock of his colleagues. He said a final farewell to them and detonated the warhead, killing one of the two remaining kaiju. _

_Gipsy Danger then entered the Breach still battling the Category 5kaiju. Transmissions grew spotty, but Mori's oxygen supply collapsed, causing her to lose consciousness, and Becket ejected her escape pod. He then manually triggered a meltdown of Gipsy Danger's nuclear core, and ejected himself with only seconds to spare._

_No explosion was indicated by the instruments, but the Breach did appear to collapse. All that is currently known about Rangers Becket, Mori, and Hansen is that their escape pods were retrieved, and they were found alive. Marshall Stacker Pentecost has been formally declared deceased by the PPDC. Hercules Hansen succeeded him as Marshall, and four minutes after the explosion, at 6:52 p.m., Hong Kong time, he ordered the PPDC War Clock stopped._

_Does humanity dare to believe this incredible story? With hundreds of thousands, possibly millions dead, trillions of dollars in damage and vast miles of coast line and ocean contaminated, is it possible that this struggle is over?_

_If that is the case, then we owe our survival not to a wall, but to the soldiers who defended our borders outside of it. The majority of the two-person teams who went into battle with kaiju gave their lives in those fights. The Jaeger Program was in the process of being phased out with only a few months of funding remaining to operate a single Shatterdome launch facility, and in this final stand, with scant support from their people, they may have saved us all. _

* * *

"Okay, that wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be," Raleigh admitted, once he got past the shock at seeing the name on the byline. Mako gave him a curious look, and he muttered, "I'll tell you later. You okay?"

She nodded, but put her head on his shoulder. "At least there aren't any lies. Sensei wasn't allowed to keep my adoption out of the records entirely; he tried. I don't know if any journalists came looking for me when I was younger."

"Oh, they did," said Tendo. "And they discovered it was a real quick way to lose their base passes. Luckily, for most of that time you were a minor, so he had the law on his side." He gave Raleigh a wry smile. "Yeah, I noticed too."

Raleigh had folded himself into a ball on his hospital bed, arms around his knees. Mako rubbed his back, trying to keep him in the present. "You think she remembers us?"

"I, uh, met her last year, actually." Raleigh looked up in surprise. Tendo explained, "She came to Anchorage, reporting on the shutdowns, looking to interview Pentecost. She missed him the first time, but I talked to her. It ended up being a good story then too. It was supposed to be a fluff assignment. She made it something better."

Raleigh smiled distantly and looked down. "That's weird. Everything about our lives is weird."

* * *

Herc was seeing red for most of the flight from Guam back to Hong Kong. "The world should know who its heroes are," one of the American doctors had protested.

"And whoever thought it would help to just throw all the raw data for anyone to mix and match is going to answer to me," Herc had retorted. For the last few days until Chuck's release, all the Guam Naval Base staff treaded very cautiously about expressing their admiration and/or gratitude to their patient or his father/commanding officer.

Stacker Pentecost had been very wrong to force his co-pilot from the ship. Someone at the Shatterdome had been very wrong to circumvent all the reporting protocols.

But Herc would wake up every morning thanking Stacker for doing the wrong thing. And he had to admit that a part of him wasn't all that sorry that the transcripts were out, because it spared him having to figure out how to organize the words of what had happened in Stacker's last moments. It spared Chuck the unjust stigma of cowardice.

Chuck was vastly improved (meaning he was ornery), but fell asleep shortly after liftoff and gradually slid onto Herc's shoulder in the chopper. Herc alternated between pondering his list of suspects for the leak and just staring at his son's face.

He growled under his breath as the chopper came in over the Shatterdome, seeing that the surrounding streets were absolutely packed with people and media trucks. Those throngs always gathered after a deployment, but this would be different.

_We didn't just save a city, we saved the whole world. _He smiled at the still-dozing kid on his shoulder. _You did. Stacker and three kids. Who thought it was a good idea to make our kids fight monsters?_

Once his blood had stopped boiling over the leak itself, he'd started reading the transcripts. He'd seen what Mako had said while they waited for pickup: _"We couldn't have done it without them." _

Them: Stacker _and_ Chuck. The Marshall and Herc's boy. _Fucking hell, I'm proud of you. I wish I hadn't let you convince me I didn't need to say it out loud once. _

He shot a quick glance around to make sure the chopper crew weren't looking. They were all checking out the hubbub around the Dome, so he brushed his lips to the top of Chuck's head. He hadn't kissed that kid since his first deployment in Lucky. With some reluctance, he sat back and gave him a little shake. "We're landing. Gonna wake up? Or I'll just bring Max in to drool on you."

"Max? Wha'?" Chuck was back on his usual wake-up protocol: complete disorientation for thirty seconds, then wide awake and alert. It was always a relief to Herc after a stint in hospital to see him this way (and that thirty-second window was often entertaining.) "Where m'dog?" He shook his head, rubbed his face, then frowned at Herc. "Who's got him? Who had him while we were in Guam?"

"Geiszler – and yeah, I checked in on him. Support crew took turns taking him for walks, just like always."

"If I find out that weirdsmobile tried to drift with him…"

Herc snorted. "He's only got four legs and twenty kilos. He's not Newt's type."

"All right, point taken." Chuck frowned at the crowd on the landing pad. "What're they out for?"

That surprised Herc. "You!"

His kid had never cared much for the public adoration (unless he was looking for a lay), and had nothing but contempt for the reporters, but the Dome crowd had always made him happy. Not now. He looked from the window back to Herc, and for a split-second, Herc could see utter panic in his eyes.

* * *

_December 29, 2019…_

_He's sixteen, you cradle-robbing shits, sixteen! _Herc's mind railed as they arrived for the final entrance interview. He'd bellowed, snarled, ranted, threatened, and near-enough begged, and Stacker had backed him, but the stinking brass were adamant. If Herc refused to give permission, they'd get Chuck emancipated, and Chuck would be thrilled. He was all for it, and took it as a complete betrayal that his old man didn't think he should be starting Academy when he was barely old enough to drive. So here they were, going through the screening process and getting along even worse than usual. They never spoke unless it was about something official.

Stacker and Herc had managed to wrangle a few concessions: no fast-tracking. If Chuck missed any part of the cuts, then cut he would be just like any other candidate. If the Jaeger Program couldn't afford to lose Herc Hansen as a pilot, they also couldn't afford to shove an unqualified one into a conn-pod.

The kid had passed all the other screening tests with flying colors, as Herc had expected – and feared. The boy was bright, in peak physical shape, had been a military brat even before the kaiju turned him into a motherless Jaeger baby. And he spent more time around the mechs than he did his own father. Herc had wryly wondered if maybe the interview portion would be Chuck's downfall; his interpersonal skills weren't exactly stellar. Then Herc recalled that Chuck's attitudes and mannerisms were a complete bloody mirror of his own, and the PPDC still seemed to want him around.

They rode to the Academy for the interview in stony silence and ignored each other in the waiting room. There were several other candidates there escorted by parents and loved ones. Quite a few were relatives of PPDC personnel, though Herc was the only active pilot.

"Charles Hansen."

Chuck rose automatically for his turn and went to join the beckoning aide. But just before he reached the door, he glanced over his shoulder, and his eyes met Herc's. Not with the accusing, bitter glare that he'd been throwing at his father for the past months (or years). Anxious, almost pleading, like he'd been those first few times Herc had left him with the minders to learn how to use these new walking weapons. "_You'll come back, right?_" Like he'd looked when Herc had swooped down to collect him in Sydney, wanting to know if they were going to get Mum now. Scared and not quite sure what he was scared of, looking for something from his dad and not understanding what it was, because Dad was such a piss-poor example of the species.

It was fleeting at that moment, a flash of appeal that came and went so swiftly that Herc thought maybe he'd imagined it. But as Chuck quickly turned back to follow the aide off to the interview room, his ears turned a little pink.

It was lucky no one said anything at that moment, because all the breath had left him.

* * *

_August 8, 2025…_

"It'll be okay," Herc said quietly, keeping it as low as he could so the crew wouldn't hear. "It's just the Dome staff, not the press. We won. They won't start the party without us."

The walls came back up along with Chuck's snide, arrogant mask. Herc managed not to sigh.

_Get the hell over it, Hercules. You'd have sold your soul to see him again when he got on that lift with Stacker. Stacker got him back to you, and did it by attacking him in his own conn-pod. Why the hell should he be any less messed up than before?_

It didn't matter. His son was here, alive, surly and full of attitude and bluster, and that was a welcome fact.

To the casual observer, it was the same pair of Hansens as before who departed the chopper and started across the pad towards the bellowed greetings and applause of the entire population of the Hong Kong Shatterdome. They ignored the crowds on the other side of the tall fences waving signs and flowers and cameras and shouting questions. Chuck Hansen in particular looked unchanged after saving the world, maybe a little thinner, moving a little stiffly, but as full of himself and annoyed with everyone else as ever.

Until Newt Geiszler pushed his way to the front of the crowd with Max straining on his leash. Chuck stopped in his tracks, his face freezing in the smirk that was suddenly belied by the look in his eyes, and the dog saw him and wrenched his leash out of his keeper's hands. The bellows got even louder, and even less coherent as Chuck hit his knees and caught the dog in his arms.

There was drool flying in every direction, a few people yelled, "Gross!" but Herc didn't even realize how broadly he was grinning, or that he put a hand on Chuck's shoulder as he bent to scratch the dog's head. And Chuck grinned up at him with Max still licking his face.

A very small group of people at the front of the Shatterdome crowd weren't cheering or clapping. Raleigh Becket and Mako Mori were grinning, as were Sasha and Aleksis Kaidanovsky and Cheung and Jin Wei. But Mako had tears sliding down her face as she leaned against Raleigh's chest, and there was a glitter in his eyes that wasn't just amusement at the Hansens' antics. There was a Kaidanovsky on either side of the two Wei brothers, all of them smiling, but the shadow over them was almost visible.

Chuck ended up hauling the dog into his arms to carry, and Max seemed fine with that, just so he could stay physically in his master's arms. Only when his son straightened his shoulders and headed for his fellow Rangers did Herc realize Chuck was using a canine shield.

"You're colorful," said Raleigh, completely dispensing with tact, and everybody was grateful for it. Chuck really was a patchwork of blue, purple, brown, yellow, green, and still some red.

"Didn't peg you for liking pink," Chuck replied. Raleigh did still look a tad sunburnt. Sasha snorted loudly, and Aleksis shook his head, but then Chuck surprised them (and his father) by telling the Gipsy pair, "You did good. I'm glad you made it."

"You too," said Mako, straightening from her slump against Raleigh's side. Seeing Chuck after last seeing him with Stacker had to be hard for her. Seeing her after drifting with Stacker was probably confusing as hell for him.

* * *

The Shatterdome medics wanted to look Chuck over themselves as soon as they were inside, despite his protests. Herc was initially going to join him in overruling them, since Guam Naval Hospital had done very well by him, as evidenced by him being on his feet and walking. But Sasha caught Herc's eye, and nodded vigorously, so he changed his mind. "Just humor them while I start sorting all the damn paperwork. Buzz me when they're finished; we'll meet up with the support crew and take stock."

To his relief, Chuck didn't realize he was being got rid of so Herc could blister ears. Once the lift doors closed, the look he shot everyone said it all. "Senior staff meeting in LOCCENT?" offered Sasha.

"Right…bloody… now," Herc growled, and nobody seemed surprised. Once they were all assembled, even including the Rangers with their assorted injuries at Sasha's insistence, he took up Stacker Pentecost's mantle with only a little doubt.

"So here we are after saving the world, and somebody with very high clearance, probably in this room, leaked the entire transcript of Operation Pitfall to the media. In my second act as your Marshall, the first being stopping the damn war clock, I promise you ladies and gentlemen, I _am_ going to find out who it was. The longer it takes, the less interested I'm going to be in your reasons."

Quite a few people cringed and made sidelong glances. Low shuffles and murmurs of anxiety rippled through as it sank in, then Sasha Kaidanovsky raised her hand. "Oh. That was me."

Dead silence. Even Aleksis did a double-take.

Tendo Choi's mouth opened, closed, then opened again, and he looked torn between sputtering shocked questions and exploding into violence. Herc knew exactly how Tendo felt.

"You covering for someone, Kaidanovsky?" Many eyes fell on Aleksis, but he looked as surprised and confused as them, and unlike Sasha, he was a poor dissembler.

"Oh no. See?" Sasha strolled forward, completely oblivious (or just unconcerned) of the stares and the blistering glower that Herc was giving her, and handed him her tablet. "As soon as LOCCENT completed it, before I sent it to you, I made a copy and sent it to nine different press outlets, and posted it on the Internet."

Her fellow Rangers were looking lost. "Why?!" Raleigh blurted, his voice a mix of anger and hurt. Mako looked too betrayed to even talk, and the Weis' faces were hard.

Sasha folded her arms. "Because the speculation had begun, and the more filtering that is done of the facts, the more they are changed. Rangers know how quickly we can go from being called heroes to failures. What is it you Americans say?" she asked Raleigh. "'Armchair quarterbacks,' they're always waiting." Her defiant stance softened, and she said with utter calm, "Your son is a little shit, Hercules." There were a few nervous titters around the room, and she went on, "But he did his duty in Pitfall with bravery, and everyone in this Shatterdome knows that. We will not have him condemned. What Marshall Pentecost did was radical, very improper, and unlike him – forgive me, Mako, but it's true. There will be a scandal. There will be questions and suspicion and speculation and criticism. To the scavengers and the opportunists, Ranger Charles Hansen will be a tempting target."

Herc locked his jaw and his joints, schooled his face into blankness to hide the coldness seeping through his core, because he knew she was right. He had realized that the minute he saw Stacker eject that pod. Herc Hansen just wanted his boy alive and to be able to rejoice freely that he was. Marshall Hansen knew it wasn't going to be that simple for anyone.

Tendo Choi spoke up, still unhappy. "So you really thought just throwing all that information out there and letting people dig around in it was a better outcome? God knows what the armchair quarterbacks are going to make of that engagement."

"_Yes_," she replied without hesitating. "Because, it was not touched or edited by Chuck Hansen's father in his official capacity and power. Everyone in this building knows you are to be trusted. Outside, it is different. You can't be accused of covering up evidence you hadn't seen yet. The world knows where you've been for the past ten days." Now there was a challenge in her red smirk, and Aleksis was starting to echo it. Interesting that his wife could still surprise him, but no matter what she did, he'd have her back. _Lucky bastard. _"Am I grounded now, Marshall? My Jaeger's at the bottom of Hong Kong Bay."

_Game, set, match. Even if I got a raise, I still don't get paid enough for this._

* * *

Chuck was still in the infirmary getting poked and prodded when Becket showed up. It was a weird, guilty relief that Mori wasn't with him. Post-engagement small talk was easier. "How many rads did you get?" he asked the American.

"Couple hundred. What'd they say… 'mild to moderate' exposure, so I kept my hair and most of my white blood cells, just puked my guts out for a few days. You?"

"Almost none. I guess I stayed ahead of it, but the wave shook me like an egg in a jar, and gave me bends for the bargain."

"Yeah, Mako and I both had to serve time in the hyperbaric chamber too." Silence hammered at them around the murmurs of the medics. Chuck noticed the looks the docs were shooting each other, like they couldn't decide whether to run interference or run for their lives. Of course, Becket couldn't resist. "Maybe you don't like to admit it, but Mako and I will: we're grateful. We couldn't have done it without you and Marshall."

"It was my job," he said curtly. "I know my job."

"We know you wouldn't have - "

Chuck shoved the medics away and stood up, rounding on the older man. "Do not try and give me a bloody _pep talk_, Becket! You want a heart-to-heart? Let me save you the trouble: I'm glad you and Mori aren't dead. Hell, all right, fine, I'm glad _I'm_ not dead, that doesn't make any of it okay, and it doesn't make us all friends. Mission's accomplished, so we can all be grateful and go our separate grateful ways."

To his immense relief, when he stalked out of the infirmary, the medics stopped Becket from following. "Sorry, Raleigh, you're still sleeping here 'till your blood tests come back normal."

Thank god for authoritarian docs. On the other hand, Mori came off the lift as he was approaching it and gave him a _look_. "Can you not wait until you're both healed before you resume hostilities?"

Brushing past her, the words "fuck off, Mori," were on the tip of his tongue, but as he and she both caught the door to let Max catch up with him, a different address flitted through his mind and choked off his voice: _Mako-chan. _

_God-fucking-damn it, you piece of shit traitor, get your fucking weak sentiments out of my head! I never should've drifted with you!_ He was so agitated on the ride down to the barracks that Max started to whine. Chuck scooped him up and made for his room as fast as his still-battered body could manage, and locked his door with a groan of relief.

He slid to the floor and buried his face in Max's side. _Damn him, damn them, damn them all to hell. _

* * *

Sasha calmly accepted Herc's formal reprimand. They both knew it was necessary, and they also both knew that she cared little for what was on her military record now. She politely didn't voice what she also knew: that Herc wasn't all that sorry that the raw truth of Pentecost's actions was public.

_We've all broken the rules now and then to protect our own. Even if he were not a fellow Ranger, we would not let him be blamed unjustly._

"I expect you to also apologize to Choi and the rest of the LOCCENT staff. You breached their trust." Herc dropped his formal tone and shifted back into the persona where he was most comfortable, merely a Ranger and a soldier, a comrade. "Just remember, Kaidanovsky, don't cross me - I know your deep dark secret." He leaned forward and said menacingly, "I know which one of you is which."

She feigned horror. "Hansen, that is a low threat!" He smirked, and the matter was dealt with. They returned their attention to everything else that had gone on in his absence, and she elected to deal with the most difficult matters first. "Cheung and Jin Wei wished to wait until everyone was recovered before holding their brother's funeral, but now that must be done. It will be a very public event, we can be sure. There should also be one for Stacker Pentecost - and preferably before the PPDC decides how to deal with his second-to-last act."

Herc sat down and rubbed his eyes. He'd set up his office in one of the conference rooms off LOCCENT rather than take over Pentecost's. Too many memories there, Sasha suspected. "Stacker's'll be no less public. Whatever the brass decides to do with his record, he's the reason that Breach was sealed. Pitfall was his plan. And blowing that nuke when he did is the reason Mako and Raleigh lived to finish it."

_And his second-to-last act is the reason your child is alive. _She didn't say it, but it hovered between them as if they were drifting, and they both knew it.

"Could've been so much worse," he muttered. "How many times did we think we were screwed? How many times did we think they'd all come back in coffins?" Sasha nodded. "When the bloody hell do we get to the fun part of being heroes?"

She held out a hand, and he took it for a brief squeeze, then let go. "It will come. Now we have time again."

_**To be continued...**_

_**Coming Soon:**__With the Breach closed, the people of the PPDC are finally free to mourn the ones they've lost. Tendo watches Hong Kong mourn Hu Wei and remembers his friend Yancy. Herc and Raleigh attend Stacker Pentecost's funeral and discover that Chuck's feelings about his late co-pilot are far more complicated than any of them realized in __**Chapter Five: All Is Well, Safely Rest.**_

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**


	5. All Is Well, Safely Rest

_**A/N:**__ Thank you all so much for the feedback! This is the final chapter of Conflict of Interest, and I do hope there is interest in the sequel that is upcoming! But the next story in this series will be a prequel, that goes into the pre-movie history of the Beckets, Tendo, and the rest of our heroes. I have another prequel nearly finished on the formative years of Striker Eureka._ _There shall be previews on my Tumblr, __**3Fluffies**_.

**Chapter Five: All Is Well, Safely Rest**

_March 2020…_

Tendo hated funerals.

Well, to be fair, he didn't know anybody who especially liked them.

After K-Day and burying Yeye, he had joined the fledgling PPDC with determination to follow his grandfather's last request. He'd been among thousands of eager volunteers who'd enlisted as the world's governments organized to respond to the "otherworldly threat" of the Breach.

But it hadn't been until several years later that the full ramifications of enlisting had dawned on Tendo and many of his colleagues. They were still wholeheartedly devoted to the cause, proud of their service, more determined with each new setback and each new success, but it had dawned on them much later that to be part of the war effort was to be endlessly surrounded by death.

And not just any death. Death was everywhere in the Kaiju War, even when the Jaegers succeeded. The death tolls dropped when the kaiju were taken out offshore, but there had never been a zero-fatality event. That had been a pipe dream, one of the loftiest goals after each attempt to close the Breach had failed.

To be a PPDC officer meant losing your colleagues, again and again. As Tendo's skills and experience grew and he received promotion after promotion, he found himself attending more and more funerals not just as the duty of an officer, but because he was a friend of the deceased.

Rescue/recovery workers, strike troopers, nuclear crisis teams, first responders. Rangers. He knew so many of them.

It got to the point that each time there was an attack, amid all the adrenaline rush came a little twinge of trepidation: more funerals were on the way.

For several years, he'd coped by trying not to be close to anyone. Philandering, no emotional attachments allowed when it came to women. He'd already formed too many bonds among the guys in the Jaeger program, in the conn-pod and out, but he was determined not to form new ones. He comforted the other crews when their pilots went down, attended the memorials, but apart from his home team bros, he didn't let himself get too friendly with anyone. At least the Becket boys could take care of themselves, and Gipsy Danger wasn't likely to go down the way some of the older models had, he'd reasoned.

Knifehead had heralded a change in more than the tide of war.

Tendo spent a lot of time angry during those hellish days before and after Yancy's funeral. He certainly wasn't the only person who lost a lot of faith then, in people and in the idea of a just and merciful god.

He'd cursed the medics who brought Raleigh back both times he went into cardiac arrest. Why did they have to focus on life-at-all-costs at a moment like this? Would Rals even be sane after this? Did they really think they'd done him any favors? Then he cursed himself for thinking that way.

That first day as the search had gone on, the hours had ticked by and they'd all finally known in their hearts that the only thing the searchers _might _find was a body, he'd cursed the _Saltchuck_'s crew. Yance and Rals had gone ten miles out to save their stupid asses. Why had they been out in the gulf in conditions like that, trying to audition for fucking _Deadliest Catch_?

There had been an undercurrent of vengeance in his choice to do the eyewitness interview. He'd known better than to give them a hard time, but he'd wanted to look in the eyes of the guys Yancy Becket had died for.

He'd gotten over that particular grudge in about thirty seconds, because he'd realized as soon as he set eyes on those ten fishermen - these men knew. They'd never met Yancy Becket, but they knew what he'd done for them, and what he and Raleigh had lost, and it was tearing them apart.

The first mate had two kids, an eleven-year-old fledgling Jaeger Fly, and a fourteen-year-old aspiring pilot. By the time he mentioned them, Tendo had already been using every shred of restraint he had not to break down in front of the witnesses. That was a good thing, because that same restraint kept him from hissing,_ Jesus, no, don't let your kids enlist! Haven't you seen what happens? They die. They die and die, and we can't save them._

Raleigh had spent three weeks in the infirmary. Tendo spent a lot of time with him, trading off with the rest of Gipsy's support crew so he was never alone. At least two of their team were at Raleigh's bedside every minute.

Tendo still had nightmares about those days. Early on, pumped full of drugs, pain-wracked and confused, Raleigh'd called for his brother again and again. He'd yelled, he'd cried, he'd pleaded. As the drugs were cut back and his brain re-oriented itself, he'd gotten quieter.

By the time he was released, he wasn't talking at all. Gipsy Danger's goofy, cheerful left hemisphere had been a shadow, only sometimes aware of his surroundings, lost in a haze of shock and sorrow. He'd followed the doctors' instructions and sometimes listened when Tendo and the others talked at him, but he'd been unable to answer beyond a nod or shake of his head.

Carolina Olivares had been the oldest of the support staff, a San Franciscan grandmother whose family had made it out with the clothes on their backs and their lives. She'd called that an embarrassment of riches. In the wake of K-Day, she had come out of retirement to join the PPDC and worked her way up swiftly to eventually become Gipsy Danger's Department Liaison, PR Representative, and full-time Den Mother.

She was the one who'd kept it together when everyone else began falling apart after Knifehead, and had admonished Tendo too to keep his head, and be the good example. They had all had to push down their own grief for Raleigh's sake. She'd been the one who'd sensed what Tendo thought in his darkest hours. "There's no point in wondering whether he's really better off," she'd told Tendo. "He's here, and for his sake and Yancy's, we have to help him. We all know Yancy would tell us to help him whether he thanks us or not."

She was the one who'd gotten Raleigh to talk again. In the most encouraging moment they had in those bleak days, she was the one who persuaded Rals to let himself cry. She was the one who'd cleared it with Marshall Pentecost to make Yancy's memorial service closed to the public and media. The funeral was immediately after Raleigh's release from the infirmary. Tendo had been frustrated with that, thinking it all too fast, but Carolina had agreed with Pentecost about the timing.

Tendo and Carolina had been on either side of Raleigh through it. He was so listless that Tendo wondered after if he'd even remember it - and figured it was just as well if he didn't. As always when a Jaeger jockey died, there had been public memorials all over the world, including a huge one put together by the Anchorage community, but Raleigh only shook his head when Carolina and Tendo gently asked if he wanted to go.

And thirty-six hours after the funeral, when they were informed Raleigh was being formally dismissed, Carolina Olivares had marched into Marshall Pentecost's office and handed in her resignation from the Corps. That had been the tipping point for a lot of Team Gipsy. Most of the staff who'd worked closest with Raleigh and Yance then resigned _en masse,_ with varying levels of volume and profanity. Even among the crew who stayed, there were colorful suggestions about where Marshall Pentecost should stick the rest of his direct orders.

Tendo might well have joined them, but he'd gone rushing to find Raleigh. Little bro was gathering a few photos and mementos in his and Yancy's quarters, moving faster than Tendo'd seen him do since before the attack. "It doesn't matter," he muttered when Tendo said he should wait to see if the dismissal would be reversed.

Tendo had grabbed his arms. "Rals, _please_. Don't. I'm begging you!" Raleigh had blinked, and Tendo had finally voiced what he was fearing. "Don't just go and... kill yourself. _Please_. You know he wouldn't want that. I know it hurts, kiddo, I know, none of us can understand what you're going through, but we are all still here, and we don't want to lose you too!"

For a few seconds, he'd feared there was no getting through, but then Raleigh's eyes had brimmed. "I won't," he whispered. "You... you don't have to worry about that. I won't do that. I'll survive." But he shuddered when he looked around the room, at the bunk beds, the paraphernalia on the walls, the clothes still discarded on the floor. The sight of that room was breaking Tendo's heart, and he could only imagine what it was doing to Raleigh. "Not here. I can't stay here."

"At least take the survivor's benefits. What're you going to do otherwise?"

Raleigh shrugged. "Get a job. It'll keep me busy." He looked at Tendo, and his lips had quirked in what seemed to be an attempt at a reassuring smile. "I'll live. I will." He glanced around the room, then seemed to flinch as he went for the door, as if the place were on fire and the heat was burning him. Metaphorically, that was probably exactly the case. The whole room seemed to be ablaze with memories of Yancy Becket, and his cut-up kid bro who was now as much consigned to memory as he was. "'f anyone wants anything - you know, I mean any of our people, not the press - they can have it. I've got the stuff I want."

Tendo chased after him with the pilots' jackets, that Carolina always teased made them look like bikers. "Don't you even want this? Or this one?" he held out Yancy's.

Raleigh's eyes glittered again in the sunset as he looked at it, and then shook his head. "You keep it, 'kay? Get rid of the other one."

"_Rals_," Tendo pleaded. "It wasn't your fault."

There'd been no response to that, no disagreement but no attempt to disabuse Tendo of the notion either. Raleigh looked at the ground, then gave Tendo a quick, rough hug. "Goodbye, my man. Thanks for everything. Don't worry about me."

And he'd walked away.

Tendo had kept both jackets and still had them. He'd made himself go back to that empty room and gather up a few odds and ends to give to some of the departing support crew. The maintenance guys had found him there and helped him clear it out, promising that anything that didn't go to a trustworthy person, they'd destroy to keep it off Ebay.

When the news got around about Alison Begay's bar fight - and the reason for it - that had nearly been Tendo's breaking point. Tendo had co-signed on all the letters of protest on that and made a formal appointment with the Marshall just to "state concerns." He'd fully expected to be writing a resignation letter afterward, but something had made him hold off.

_And... _Marshall Pentecost had handed him his ass without ever raising his voice. He'd known when he left the office that he had to stay. He had to endure this too.

That night, twenty-four days after Yancy Becket's death and two days after his funeral, for the first time, Tendo Choi had cried. He sat on the floor of his quarters with the Becket boys' pilot jackets in his lap and sobbed like a baby. He had cried for hours, for Yance, for Rals, for Carolina, for Yeye, for their team who'd been so tight-knit for four years and longer and now shattered like glass, for all the other teams who'd seen it all fall apart this way, trying to save the world and feeling like it had already ended.

Some time really late, there'd been a knock on his door. He'd assumed it was Carolina, until he remembered Carolina was already on her way to join her family in Colorado.

To his complete surprise, it was Alison Begay, with her bruised knuckles and eyes puffy from crying.

The rest was history.

* * *

_August 2025…_

Tendo had told that story to Mako while she was restoring Gipsy and searching for Raleigh. He'd liked her from day one, but a few times, she'd seemed disapproving about the way Raleigh had disappeared, and that so few of Gipsy's support crew had stayed afterward.

She'd been misty-eyed by the end of the tale, which Tendo had given in full detail partly because he wanted her to get it through her head that the Jaegers weren't just big weapons, and neither were the people who operated them. So many recruits in the Academy thought it was such a sexy gig, and well, it was, but there was one hell of a dark side to it.

He'd never imagined that he would end up back on Gipsy's crew with her and Raleigh as pilots. Or that they would really live to see the end of the war, rather than the end of the world.

But now there were more funerals. And unlike Yancy's five years before, these were public.

Tang Hu Wei's was as painful for the Corps as everyone knew it would be. It was beautiful, a blend of local cultural tradition and formal PPDC protocol, attended by tens of thousands of people in Hong Kong and watched by millions.

When Tendo had arrived at the Hong Kong Shatterdome months earlier, the whole city had seemed decked out in red, keeping with Crimson Typhoon's theme and the Wei Tang mania for their protectors. Now the city was black. Red was an unlucky color for a young man's funeral.

A few distant relatives had appeared after the brothers became living legends, but some of Typhoon's crew had confided to Tendo that the triplets had little use for the ones who came out of the woodwork. Still, Tendo was glad to see a few people there as family aside from just Cheung and Jin. They had one aunt, Lui Wei, who they'd known before, and she had the position of surrogate mother. The rest of the people allowed closest to the brothers were their support crew, the family they'd been closest to for the past ten years.

Tendo found himself frequently searching the crowd of PPDC personnel for Raleigh, knowing the memories this had to be stirring up. He stood among the knot of Rangers, with Mako on one side of him and Marshall Hansen on the other. As far as Tendo could tell, Raleigh never let go of Mako's hand.

The Rangers all went to the burial outside the city. "How often have we had the chance to do this?" Sasha Kaidanovsky observed. She had a point. Rangers had always tried to attend the funerals of their fellows even when they didn't know each other, and even when it wasn't possible, every Shatterdome had always held a simultaneous memorial to fallen comrades. But even in the same cities, commanding officers rarely gave pilots leave to attend the actual interment of their comrades in arms. The watch was never over, and as their ranks thinned, the need for them to be at their Shatterdomes at all times had only grown.

By most traditions Tendo knew, Hu's death when he was young and unmarried wouldn't call for a big, heavily-attended funeral, but the masses certainly had turned out to pay respects. The war had changed an awful lot of traditions. Tang Hu Wei had certainly earned it.

The Rangers all returned to the Shatterdome that night. Sasha and Aleksis said their good-nights and vanished into their room. Chuck collected Max and went off to his room as well, while Herc headed for his office. It was the wee hours of the morning when Tendo noticed somebody was in Gipsy's pod bay.

He found Mako and Raleigh there, curled up on one of the cots against the wall that the crews had used while on twenty-four-hour watch. Mako was asleep, sitting halfway up against the cushions they'd piled behind themselves. Raleigh's head was in her lap, but he was awake, staring at nothing until Tendo came in. His expression when he met Tendo's eyes was all too familiar, that same empty sadness that had been there since Knifehead.

Mako had made it better, helped him in so many ways, but Tendo knew he'd never heal completely. That rowdy kid from Anchorage was gone forever just as surely as his big brother. But tonight, although Raleigh didn't say anything, he smiled.

_Six months ago, even when we were looking for him, I never imagined I'd see him smile again. _Raleigh had kept his sort-of promise. He hadn't killed himself. And Tendo had seen him with the Weis since Crimson Typhoon had gone down, passing the basketball around.

_Yance used to say how proud he was of you. _Drifting with his brother, Raleigh probably knew about those conversations. _I sure hope you know how proud he'd be now. And not just because of what you did in Pitfall. _

* * *

Stacker Pentecost's memorial was a few days later, on the Shatterdome grounds. That kept the crowds at bay, though on every public street surrounding it, there were throngs. All the PPDC and UN brass came strutting in, and the press was even more avid about the flood of dignitaries from multiple nations.

"Now we find out whether I actually keep this job or lose it because I slugged one of those suits," Herc muttered as he and Chuck were getting ready.

Mechanically scratching Max's head, Chuck said nothing. In the past, silence was usually just a sulk, but this morning he just seemed… distracted, like he was thinking hard.

Herc supposed the kid had a lot to untangle in his head when it came to Stacker. The man had drifted with him for hours in combat. However strong Pentecost's control, things would have slipped through. No one could completely control thoughts and feelings. He'd been a superior up until then, a man Chuck respected, but in Operation Pitfall, he'd become a partner and co-pilot. That was a powerful bond.

And that was a bond Stacker had betrayed, and in so doing, saving Chuck's life, leaving him to sort out all the conflicting demands of duty, honor, gratitude, and guilt that were eating away at everyone. Herc found it hard to know what to think and feel. Chuck had to be experiencing that fourfold.

_Piloting solo. Another jockey who lived while the other died. _Only Raleigh had experienced the horror of a death through the drift firsthand, but the emotional aftershock was now shared by the Weis and Chuck Hansen.

Now Raleigh was the only living Ranger who had controlled a Jaeger alone. But after drifting with Stacker, Herc's son very possibly knew what that felt like.

"Ready?"

Chuck knuckled Max's head and checked to make sure his food bowl was full, then slipped ahead of Herc for the door. "Behave yourself, Max," he admonished the dog, which made Herc smile.

Herc knew Chuck resented Stacker now, and didn't really blame him. He'd seen it in the way Chuck scowled when the others talked about him, especially when they praised him. He wouldn't have been at all surprised if Chuck ferociously hated him. He'd half-expected his son to demand to be excused from attending the memorial altogether.

But Chuck hadn't. Nor did he balk at walking out of their quarters, down the hall to the lift, or outside to join the assembled throngs in their formal uniforms for the second time in a week. With him a few paces ahead, Herc noticed how his walk had changed. Chuck didn't have that bulldog-swagger anymore. It might have been his still-healing bones, the muscles and tendons pummeled in that pod… but there was something purposeful about his stride, and he certainly wasn't limping.

_You were wrong to do what you did, Stacker. You broke the first rule of piloting, broke the trust of your partner. He'll be trying to sort that out in his head for the rest of his life._

_Thank you for cracking just that once._

Mako Mori was a picture of stoicism, but Herc wanted to start smashing cameras and breaking noses among that crowd of slavering reporters who flashed their lights and bellowed their questions at her. Judging by the black looks he kept shooting them from Mako's side, Raleigh was thinking the same.

They went through the introductions and condolences from the suits on autopilot. Still wheelchair-bound, Aleksis Kaidanovsky and Jin Wei (along with their respective partners) got to dodge that creepy receiving line, and Herc wouldn't have stopped Chuck if he'd gone to join them immediately.

He didn't.

He didn't have much to say to any of the suits beyond a mutter of "yes, ma'am," or "thank you, sir," (and neither did Herc, Mako, or Raleigh), but he endured the handshakes and gushing with them.

And when they went to the front of the assembled mourners to their seats with the other Rangers, Chuck went next to Mako on the other side of Raleigh, between her and Herc. That was where Stacker would normally have been.

Herc would bet both of his Jaegers that Chuck hadn't even realized why he'd done that.

* * *

Raleigh had never seen Chuck Hansen do stoic. Sullen, yes, disinterested, that too. He was worried when he saw Chuck take the seat next to Mako at Marshall Pentecost's memorial. If he could have managed it without being seen, he'd have elbowed the guy or passed him a note or something.

_I know you're pissed at Marshall, but don't you dare take it out on her. _

He kept stealing glances, and to his surprise, Chuck wasn't rolling his eyes or muttering sarcastically as the speeches went on. Like Mako, he was… composed. Stoic.

He stood and saluted when his name was announced as Pentecost's last partner, and Raleigh felt Mako flinch as the cameras went wild again. It got easier when Striker Eureka's support team rose to pay their homage to their fallen pilot. The Chief Engineer was a dark-skinned, statuesque woman named Kyrra Taior. She was at least forty years old, but looked like she could take Raleigh in the Kwoon. Her official job was managing the Jaeger and its systems, not its people, but from the way Striker's support crew looked to her, Raleigh had no doubt he was seeing their version of Carolina Olivares.

She had landed the position of honor, making the closing speech of the evening, on behalf of a Jaeger crew, Pentecost's final crew. Not platitudes by some pompous stuffed shirt. Raleigh was glad of that, and knew Chuck and Mako had to be as well.

"The moment that Marshall Pentecost donned Striker Eureka's drivesuit, this team was his. Marshall Pentecost knew what this mission would cost him, whether we succeeded or failed, that he would not be coming back. But with our Striker team and our pilot, Chuck Hansen, he carried out a plan that saved our entire world. He is as much a part of Striker Eureka now as the father and son who led her to so many battles."

Mako's chin was rising, eyes bright, as Kyrra finished, "We all knew we would lose our Jaegers. To the rest of the world, they've been defenders, monuments, even toys. To us, all these years, they became our homes. Worse than losing them is losing lives, our pilots, our front-line soldiers."

"At the darkest hour of Operation Pitfall, Marshall Pentecost made a decision that no one anticipated. He broke every rule and regulation and the trust that the Corps placed in him. And by so doing, he saved one life. Because of this action, Striker Eureka's family mourns only one pilot today. The PPDC mourns a father, a mentor, and a great leader. Striker Eureka's crew, her support staff, her technicians, her family, all bless our last pilot not only for his valor in battle. We bless his humanity, his choice to turn his back on all codes and follow his conscience." Her dark eyes went to Chuck, and there was almost a challenge in them. "We thank Stacker Pentecost for our son."

The applause was intense, spreading through the attending guests to the streets beyond, growing into a roar to let the Kyrra and Striker's crew know how many people wholeheartedly agreed. Raleigh didn't dare look at Chuck, not that he could have done it without leaning around Mako.

As the ceremony ended, the press only got worse, pushing at the security lines to yell questions. "Do you want to say anything?" Raleigh asked her.

Mako hesitated, then shook her head. "I should, but I... I can't."

Chuck stepped past them and headed towards the wolfpack and their microphones, causing Mako to make a choked noise. Raleigh saw Herc start to follow as if to pull his son back. He visibly caught himself, even as the reporters bombarded his Chuck with questions.

"Ranger Hansen, do you think Marshall Pentecost was wrong to save you?"

"Are you glad he spared your life?"

"Are you grateful to Marshall Pentecost?"

"What was going through his mind at the end?"

That last one got a growl of indignation from Aleksis, and Sasha and Cheung Wei were starting forward when Chuck answered. His hands were clasped behind his back - like Marshall had always done. "Sure, I'm grateful. You should all be. He's the reason any of you are still here. He saved the Jaeger Program when the UN gave up on it."

"But what about YOU?!" the whole pack seemed to chorus, shoving their microphones forward again. "He attacked you!"

"He saved your life!"

"Do you think it's right that the PPDC might put a black mark on his record for saving you?!"

Chuck didn't flinch, though several of Striker's support crew did. After a brief pause, he replied curtly, "The only statements I'm making are the ones going in the report. Apart from that, no comment." He turned his back and rejoined the Rangers, ignoring the paparazzi's frenzied shouts and protests.

"Well done," Sasha told him quietly. He didn't answer, but looked at Mako, and Raleigh would have given good money to know what was going through his head.

* * *

There were candlelight parades that night, coordinated all around the world as thousands of cities dimmed their lights. Raleigh knew there had been similar memorials for Yancy in Anchorage, San Diego, LA, and Tijuana in 2020, but he'd been too out of it at the time and never got up the strength to search out the videos since.

Three weeks since Pitfall, with no attacks, people were starting to latch on to the belief that maybe, just maybe, they could believe it. That it was really over.

All the Rangers wound up on the roof of the Shatterdome along with the support crews and staff when Hong Kong when dark, lit for one minute only by the candles and lanterns in the hands of millions of people. In the silence, they could hear voices over loudspeakers reciting the names.

_"Erin Riley, Spotter Pilot._

_Haruki Yamamoto, Spotter Pilot._

_James Yifitheg, Rescue-Recovery._

_Lydia Gonzalez, Rescue-Recovery._

_Jing Li, Ranger, Horizon Brave._

_Min Li, Ranger, Horizon Brave."_

They weren't just the names of the Rangers, but every man and woman in the Jaeger program who had lost their life fighting the kaiju. Raleigh recognized many of them. Spotter and rescue/recovery crews had an especially hazardous job tailing the mechs and the kaiju before, during, and after the fights. Especially when the older model nuclear Jaegers had been damaged, they often took massive doses of radiation - and most kept on working until they dropped. Gipsy Danger's support crew had lost twelve people in action before Anchorage.

Raleigh recognized that the list was in the order from the beginning of the Jaeger Program to the end, and braced himself, but he still flinched around halfway through.

_"Yancy Becket."_

Mako had heard it coming as well, and had her arms around him. He felt gentle pats on his back and shoulders from multiple directions, but for a few seconds, he couldn't see, and the sparkling at street level blurred away.

The list wound on, name after name after name, barely one second for each individual, each man, each woman who had enlisted for their own reasons and not lived to see this end.

_It's over, Yance. It's finished. Do you know that, wherever you are? Do you guys know? _A whimsical image floated through his mind of all those people, all those faces in a crowd not unlike the one here on the roof of the Shatterdome or in the streets of Hong Kong, listening to that list of names and knowing that it was all over. At the front of the crowd would be Yancy, solemn like he always was at the memorials, not that anybody had ever been especially happy.

Raleigh had Mako on one side of him, Tendo on the other. Mako's arms were around his waist, and for a few minutes... he could almost imagine it wasn't Tendo's arm around his shoulders. That squeeze of the hand on his arm when they heard a familiar name from their days with Gipsy, so familiar.

He gradually came out of it as the list wound on, and looked over his shoulder for the Weis when Hu's name was announced. Jin and Cheung saw him and nodded, and he tightened his grip on Mako as the list came to its last name:

_"Stacker Pentecost, Ranger, Marshall."_

Much later that night, Mako and Raleigh went down Scramble Alley, out through the side door to the harbor with a paper lantern she had made, only to find someone had anticipated them.

"This a private party, or can anyone join?" asked Chuck.

Mako smiled for the first time all day, and beckoned. Raleigh stepped back and let Chuck help her set the lantern afloat on its little raft into the current. The wind was high, but the tide was going out, and eventually they lost sight of it in the waves. Raleigh folded her into his arms and rested his chin on top of her head. Chuck didn't touch her, but Raleigh wondered if maybe he wanted to.

Gradually, she relaxed and stood a little straighter, looking at Chuck with weary, red eyes. "Thank you." He just nodded, and Mako gazed out at the harbor, unashamed of the tears sliding down her cheeks. There were lanterns on the salvage boats working on the wrecks of Cherno Alpha and Crimson Typhoon. "He's with Tamsin-san now. They're at peace."

Raleigh could feel wetness on his own face in the cool night air. The dim light of stars, city, and lanterns reflected a little off Chuck Hansen's face as well. But he didn't react, and Chuck didn't react, and they all knew no one would tell.

_**~Fin~**_

_And so ends this section of my series, Generation K. Hope you've enjoyed it, and I hope there will be interest in the next installments. (Please do let me know in your reviews!)_

_I shall give you these tidbits that form the basis for the story: (1) Stacker Pentecost and Raleigh Becket had a somewhat checkered history even before Knifehead, (2) it takes a village to deploy a Jaeger, and Tendo Choi was in that village from day one, and (3) we all know what Yancy meant to Raleigh, but Raleigh meant just as much to Yancy._

_All that and much more in __**Generation K: Aurora Borealis**__._

**PLEASE don't forget to review!**


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